Before the outbreak of war, the Germans proffered one damning response to the ambitions of the British dye trade: relax and retire. Other nations should not envy Germany’s position, but simply leave it alone. Carl Duisberg believed that England really had ‘no cause for complaint about her success and position in the world, and especially no cause for complaint that perhaps one or another country has superseded her in one or other industry’. England had highly developed coal and iron industries, and the leading spinning and weaving factories. Before the war, England had more colonial possessions than anyone. But only in the coal-tar colour industry must she be satisfied with second (or third or fourth or fifth) place behind Germany (and then Switzerland, the United States and Russia). ‘Why should Germany in this one instance not take a leading position?’ the man at Bayer wondered.
It was argued that the German dye industry was already too huge, and enjoyed such spectacular dominance, that its position was unassailable; even decades of inspired competition would only chip away at the edifice. As it turned out, war would make a little difference, but it was an intriguing proposition: so what if England invented cricket; even a proud nation would come to accept that other countries would one day learn to beat them at it every time.
All of which might have made good sense, and would not have mattered beyond repair (just another – not the last – example of British genius shipped abroad by money and ignorance), had it not been for the fact that the dye trade was not just the dye trade any more. By 1914, at the beginning of the first industrialised war, the chemistry that made dyes had advanced to the stage where it could now alleviate pain and save lives. William Perkin’s initial fumblings with the formula for quinine was bearing fruit in unfamiliar ways (though still not with artificial quinine, which would not be synthesised until the next war). Perkin had shown in his lifetime that once you could make mauve and alizarin, you could then also make artificial perfume and saccharin. These were complex conquests, but they represented a logical advance to most skilled research chemists. The more these chemists were valued and rewarded, the greater would be the eventual benefits. What was needed was the prepared mind. And it was inevitable that the next major chemical advances would occur in Germany.
Because of the huge share they enjoyed of the world market, the six major German companies were soon at each other’s throats. With such riches to be made, competition was fierce. This led to the undercutting of prices and the further decimation of rival markets, but also to a reduction in profits. The solution lay in the formation of two loose cartels, each of which carved up a larger slice of the market and ensured efficiency of production and agreements on prices. In 1904, Hoechst combined with Leopold Cassella (Frankfurt) and three years later with Kalle of Biebrich. Bayer joined forces with BASF and AGFA, a group that became known as the Little IG (an Interessengemeinschaft, a community of like-interests). The man behind these collusions was Carl Duisberg, who had visited the United States in 1903 to set up a Bayer factory in New York and there learnt about the booming trust movement, and in particular John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust.
The template worked well in Germany, and put an end to price cutting and patent swindles while retaining each company’s autonomy. It also meant that the firms were freed up to develop their other chemical interests and thus ensure their expansion.
AGFA became the largest European manufacturer of photographic materials. Bayer made aspirin, the worlds biggest-selling pain reliever, manufactured since 1899 from the dyestuff intermediate salicylic acid. It also made heroin and methadone, and, with a poignancy that would have delighted William Perkin, its dye money also funded the successful launch of Atebrin, a new malarial treatment. BASF led the search for a synthetic ammonia that would free Germany from its dependence on the monopolistic supply of the natural fertiliser from Chile. It had another use – as the base of almost all modern explosives. Both applications depended on the synthetic formation of ammonia, a breakthrough attained after a massive effort by Fritz Haber, who successfully combined nitrogen and hydrogen (a process developed commercially by Carl Bosch at BASF in 1913 and still in widescale use). In 1915 Haber was the first to develop chlorine as a large-scale war gas.
At Hoechst am Main, much dye money went to support the work of Paul Ehrlich, the brilliant scientist who used William Perkin’s colours to change the course of medicine. Ehrlich studied in Breslau and Strasbourg, and took his first job at a hospital in Berlin. Here he worked on typhoid fever and tuberculosis, a disease he contracted himself. He was a small, wiry man, who took to smoking 20 cigars a day. From his earliest studies he was convinced of the limitless potential for using coal-tar and other dyes in the development of biology and medicine, and his conviction led him to pioneer the earliest forms of chemotherapy.
The staining of cells with aniline dyes was first conducted in the early 1860s by F. W. B. Beneke of Marburg (who used mauve) and Joseph Janvier Woodward, a surgeon in the US Army, who used fuchsine and aniline blue in his examinations of human intestines. Two factors made this possible. The first was a great technical advance in the microscope, which, invented in 1590 by a Dutch spectacle maker, consisted initially of a magnifying lens set in a wooden frame. The English physicist and architect Robert Hooke, who helped plan the reconstruction of London after the great fire of 1666, used an improved microscope to first describe the presence of compartmentalised elements he had detected in cork, thus giving rise to the concept of the living cell. Great advances were made by the Delft draper Anton van Leeuwenhoek who left 247 microscopes when he died in 1723, many with fixed samples of the ‘little animalcules’ (protozoa) he had observed in rainwater and semen. He employed one of the earliest uses of natural dye staining when he improved the visibility of the muscle fibres of cows by marking them with a yellow saffron solution. The Englishman Sir John Hill subsequently used extract of logwood to study the microscopic structure of timber. And a few years before the discovery of aniline dyes, Joseph von Gerlach used carmine to make an important analysis of brain specimens. Many of his microscopes used a primitive screw to focus, and results were limited by the impure quality of the lenses and strong chromatic distortions. Improvements came gradually – the variable eyepiece, the elimination of the aberrant deflection of coloured rays, improved glass lenses – until by 1869 it had evolved sufficiently to enable crucial early advances in genetic research.
In this year a Swiss chemist called Friedrich Miescher used aniline dyes in his detection of ‘nuclein’, that part of a cell nucleus that was not protein. Nuclein contains phosphorus, and was later renamed nucleic acid. One form of this, deoxyribonucleic acid, we now know as DNA. After his great discovery, but perhaps without realising its implications, Miescher then spent the rest of his life studying patterns of fertilisation and the nuclein in the sperm of German salmon. It was left to such men as Walther Flemming to use the most basic aniline dyes to perceive the threadlike structures in the cell nucleus that would later be called chromosomes. Flemming developed early theories about cell division with his work on salamanders, and coined the word ‘mitosis’ to describe the splitting of chromosomes along their lengths into two matching halves (the word ‘chromatin’, describing the vivid colour within a nucleus after staining – derived from the Greek word for colour, chroma – was also his).
It was Paul Ehrlich who realised that the chemical dyes obtained from coal-tar did not simply colour cells or tissue samples with their own tint, but often combined with a substance to form a definable chemical reaction. The aniline colour methyl green, for example, while leaving the nucleus green, would stain the cytoplasm of a cell red. In 1875, Ehrlich’s cousin Carl Weigert had demonstrated that the fuchsine derivative methyl violet stained bacteria in tissue samples (as opposed to the tissue itself), and it was probably this observation that inspired Ehrlich to devote much of his early career to the new science of staining, and confirm its key role in the identification of nucleic acids, sugars and amino acids.
His firs
t significant impact was felt in the Berlin laboratories of the bacteriologist Robert Koch, the Prussian who had found fame with his discovery of the bovine anthrax bacillus and his theories of how germs might spread between animals and cause disease in humans. Koch had studied Ehrlich’s latest staining techniques, and used the aniline dye methylene blue to detect and then prove the existence and effect of the tiny rod-shaped bacillus in the tissue of those struck down with tuberculosis. Similar work with cholera followed, and in this way did Koch make huge strides in our modern treatment of disease.
Paul Ehrlich claimed that the evening in 1882 on which Koch announced the cause of tuberculosis was his greatest experience in science, and it inspired him to work with Koch on the development of the drug tuberculin (an only moderately successful treatment, but an effective indicator of disease). This work led to Ehrlich’s own practical discoveries at the dawn of what would soon be referred to as biochemistry, the fusion between chemistry and physiology. Ehrlich’s work also relied on another collusion – that between medicine and chemical industry. Even though the molecular structures of many colour dyes were being unlocked with great frequency in the 1880s, Ehrlich would not wait for exact formulae to begin his own experiments. New textile colours were immediately incorporated into tissue and cell staining, and some of the results were extraordinary.
Methylene blue was found not only to be effective as a diagnostic in bacteriological work (including malarial cases that were not responsive to quinine), but also to possess properties that were themselves intrinsically useful in medicine. It was found to be a mild antiseptic, and it was one of several coal-tar derivatives to be important in Joseph Lister’s development of antisepsis and sterilisation. The ability of the dye to transform haemoglobin into methaemoglobin (in which the iron has been oxidised and plays no part in oxygen transport) was used to treat cyanide poisoning, since methaemoglobin turns cyanide far less toxic. Methylene blue was employed in Ehrlich’s pioneering studies of living cells (as opposed to previous work on animal and human cadavers); his injections of the dye into frogs vividly stained the nerve cells, an observation of invaluable use to anatomists’ studies of the nervous system.
In time, the chemical properties of several other dyes were also found to have significant therapeutic results and became listed as official drugs. Congo red was found to be therapeutic as a treatment for infectious rheumatism and an antitoxin against diphtheria. Scarlet red has been found to stimulate the growth of specific cells and for the care of chronic ulcers and burns. Acridine yellow was used as an anti-bacterial agent from 1916, while the orange-red fluorescein dye mercurochrome was widely used as a disinfectant for small wounds. Another orange-red dye known as Prontosil red was found by the German biochemist Gerhard Domagk to be anti-bacterial (it combated streptococcal infections), and led to the development of important sulfa (or sulphonamide) drugs which fought off puerperal fever, pneumonia and leprosy. Gentian violet was employed for antibacterial and antifungal purposes.‡
It was the widespread use of dyes in medicine and pharmacy (in the colouring of pills and mixtures) that necessitated a new standardisation of the descriptive names for colours. By the time such an index was established in the United States in 1939, eighty-three years after mauve, it contained the names of just over 7,500 synthetic colours.
By a nice twist of fate, Ehrlich gave something back to textiles in the form of new dyes. His work on methylene blue showed that dye was transported through the bloodstream, and entered the cells as fine particles. He determined to discover whether this process was due to the particular colour, or to the sulphur it contained, and so substituted the dye with one in which the sulphur was replaced by oxygen. In this process he collaborated with Heinrich Caro, and Caro’s own search for a substitution yielded the new class of rhodamine dyes, which are still widely used in biological staining.
Ehrlich’s lasting fame came from his work on blood cells and immunity, for which he won a Nobel prize, and for introducing Salvarsan (1910), the synthetic chemical that treated syphilis (which was also called ‘Ehrlich’s 606th’, a reference to the fact that Salvarsan had been discovered only after he had tested but discarded another 605 similar compounds). Initially, Ehrlich’s achievement with Salvarsan received little acclaim, as those with syphilis were widely thought not to merit a cure. But with time it was acknowledged that this dye work established the viable search for what he termed ‘the magic bullet’, a process that involved first highlighting and then targeting specific disease-causing micro-organisms by altering the chemical structure of staining molecules – the foundation of chemotherapy. Before the introduction of penicillin in the 1930s, and many years before the principle was used to treat cancer, chemotherapy drugs served as the main (albeit limited) treatment of septicaemia, pneumonia and meningitis. Hoechst also developed Novocain, a revolutionary synthetic local anaesthetic still employed in dentists’ surgeries. The success of Salvarsan also led to new therapies for tropical diseases, including mepacrine and proguanil, two of several new drugs which, between the wars, began to supersede quinine as the most common treatment of malaria.
*
The Great War transformed colour throughout the world. It was inevitable that trade bans and isolationism would force all countries that had relied on Germany for its dyes to find other supplies; it was remarkable how swiftly and successfully this challenge was met. In Britain, the war served to resuscitate the entire industry.
The solution lay in takeovers and mergers. At the government’s behest, Ivan Levinstein and his son Herbert took over the Hoechst indigo works at Ellesmere Port, while the BASF factory at Birkenhead was taken over by Brotherton of Leeds.
Read Holliday merged with the Bradford Dyers Association and Calico Printers Association to form British Dyes Ltd, a company that then merged with Levinstein Ltd and smaller companies in 1919 to form the British Dyestuffs Corporation. Jointly, these companies supplied not only enough dye for uniforms and other products, but enough intermediate substances such as the nitro compounds required for the propulsion of shells. The success of this enterprise – based on the hard-won realisation that the development of organic chemistry actually had a significant role to play in any modern society – would inform the establishment of Imperial Chemical Industries in 1926, a merger between United Alkali Co. Ltd, Brunner, Mond & Co., Nobel Industries Ltd and the British Dyestuffs Corporation that swiftly accounted for 40 per cent of all chemical production in Britain. ICI also incorporated the British Alizarine Company, the London firm that had swallowed up what remained of the supplies and patents of Perkin and Sons, and in this way could trace its lineage back precisely seventy years to the discovery of mauve. By the Second World War, the lessons learnt at the start of the Great War ensured that Britain was self-sufficient in shellfire and the ability to dye its own uniforms.
In the United States, where the reliance on German dyes had been as crippling as in Britain, a similar transformation occurred. Addressing the National Silk Convention in New Jersey in 1916, the chairman of W. Beckers’ Aniline and Chemical Works noted that any country that had its national defence at heart should possess a strong dye-making industry within its own borders. Beckers noted a phenomenal growth even before the United States entered the war: in 1914 only five factories were actively engaged in the production of aniline dyes, while just two years later over eighty firms dealt in coal-tar products – either with intermediates of colour dyes or dyes themselves. Partly this was down to national pride, and what was seen as a willingness on the part of the consumer to accept slightly unpredictable colours if they were made in America. Dr Beckers told his audience of the particular problems he was having with putting methylene blue on silks: ‘If you would not have been broadminded, and would not have taken from our hands ton lots after ton lots of such dyestuffs which were not quite up to standard shade, we would have gone bankrupt at the start.’ It helped that the war ensured that consumers had no choice in the matter.
In 1916, Britain p
layed a significant role in the establishment of the Du Pont dyeworks, with Herbert Levinstein exchanging information on the production of indigo. In 1914, the American dye industry employed just 214 chemists; by 1919 the number was 2,600.
In Switzerland, which had greatly increased dye production during the war and supplied the majority of British imports, Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz jointly formed the Baseler Chemische Industrie, while similar cartels appeared in France and Italy. In Germany in 1916, eight companies formed a conglomerate to prepare for greater competition in a post-war market. The Interessengemeinschaft der Deutschen Teerfarbenfabriken – IG Farben – included BASF, Bayer, Agfa and Hoechst, a syndicate that instantly became the biggest chemical company in the world, and would soon try to take it over.§
* After the war, Mollwo Perkin became custodian of some of his father’s property and what remained of his dyestuffs. On 24 October 1922 he wrote to H. E. Armstrong, a former student and historian of the Royal College of Science, from his home in New Oxford Street. His telegram address was Mauvein, Westcent, London. ‘I have pleasure in sending you a sample of the Original Mauve made by my Father in 1856 or 1857. The bottle which I have is marked 1856 so I presume it was made in that year. It certainly was not manufactured at the Factory.
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