"In France, Francois-Emmanuel Verguin, the director of the chemical factory of Louis Rafard near Lyon, tried many different formulae before finally in late 1858 or early 1859, mixing aniline with carbon tetrachloride, producing a reddish-purple dye which he called "fuchsine", after the color of the flower of the fuchsia plant. He quit the Rafard factory and took his color to a firm of paint manufacturers, Francisque and Joseph Renard, who began to manufacture the dye in 1859." Wikipedia
The story of this colour continues: "In the same year, two British chemists, Chambers Nicolson and Georges Maule, working at the laboratory of the paint manufacturer George Simpson, located in Walworth, south of London, made another aniline dye with a similar red-purple color, which they began to manufacture in 1860 under the name "roseine". In 1860 they changed the name of the color to "magenta", in honor of the battle fought between the French and Austrians at Magenta, Italy the year before. Before printer's magenta was invented in the 1890s for CMYK printing, and electric magenta was invented in the 1980s for computer displays, these two artificially engineered colors were preceded by the color displayed (below), which is the color originally called "fuchsine" made from coal tar dyes in the year 1859. The name of the color was soon changed to "magenta", being named after the Battle of Magenta fought at Magenta, Lombardy-Venetia." Wikipedia
So there you go: Industrial espionage (or theft) and Imperial politics combined in search of a colour.
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| A freshly opened Camellia Drama Girl |
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