Purple is a special color in the history of chemistry. The first artificial dye synthesized by humans was purple.

before that, people's dyes came from a variety of natural animals and plants. For example, red can be extracted from cochineal insects. After indigo in plants such as Isatis indigotica is treated, the blue dye indigo can be obtained.

in 1856, chemist William Henry Perkin (William Henry Perkin) accidentally acquired aniline purple, a purple substance that can be dyed for a long time, and synthetic dyes were born. To be exact, the aniline violet he got is a mixture of a series of similar compounds whose structure is as follows:

at that time, Perkin intended to synthesize quinine, but this was not successful at all. This is because, at that time, people's understanding of chemical structure was not so deep.

before synthetic dyes appeared, natural purple dyes were very expensive, so synthetic purple dyes quickly entered the market as soon as they appeared. Later, synthetic purple dyes such as basic fuchsin, methyl violet and benzo red purple also appeared one after another.

the following is a letter from the inventor Perkin's son and silk cloth dyed with aniline purple:

the following is an antique purple dress from 1885, in which methyl purple 2B and aniline purple two artificial purple dyes are used:

by the way, the ingredients in the purple solution belong to methyl purple, but now the purple solution has basically been replaced by a better disinfectant.

now, many kinds of artificial dyes have been developed, and many early dyes have been gradually eliminated and withdrawn from the market, but it is interesting to understand the history of early purple artificial dyes.

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