Summary
In 1856, a teenager experimenting at home accidentally made a colour that was more gaudy and garish than anything that had gone before. William Perkin was messing about at home, trying to make the anti-malarial Quinine - but his experiment went wrong. Instead he made a purple dye that took Victorian London by storm. Philip Ball tells the story of this famous stroke of serendipity. Laurence Llewelyn- Bowen describes the fashion sensation that ensued and chemist, Andrea Sella tells how Perkin's purple prompted the creation of much more than colourful crinolines.
(Photo: William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), British chemist. Credit: Science Photo Library)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you're listening to Discovery on |
| 0:05.0 | for details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to BBCworldservice |
| 0:08.8 | dot com slash podcasts. |
| 0:11.6 | You're listening to Discovery on the BBC. I'm Philip Ball. |
| 0:17.0 | Today's science story is the story of the invention of a new color in Victorian London. |
| 0:29.0 | A reservoir of dirt, drunkenness and drabs. That's what Charles Dickens called Shadwell in |
| 0:35.8 | Victorian times although I'm not sure he wasn't being affectionate. But out of |
| 0:41.2 | this dirt and drabs an East End lad called William Perkin created a colour so |
| 0:46.9 | lurid and intense it caused a fashion sensation so all-consuming that even Dickens commented on it. |
| 0:55.8 | As I look out of my window, the apotheosis of Perkins Purple seems at hand, purple-striped gowns, crampirouches, jam up cabs, throng steamers, fill railway stations, |
| 1:08.3 | all flying countryward like so many migrating birds of purple paradise. |
| 1:15.0 | In the summer of 1859, you just couldn't escape this gaudy colour. |
| 1:20.0 | A crinoline of purple is very, very difficult to miss. |
| 1:25.2 | Every single bit of it is exactly the same shade of mauve. |
| 1:29.7 | So it is massive, massive overkill. |
| 1:32.8 | Hurrah! |
| 1:34.0 | William Perkin is famous for the mauved eye |
| 1:36.9 | he created by accident at home in Shadwell. |
| 1:40.6 | But this serendipitous discovery didn't just transform the Victorian High Street. |
| 1:46.0 | It kick-started the entire modern chemicals industry. |
| 1:50.0 | Perkins Move is this incredible dye which grabs people's attention and what it does is it suddenly kind of galvanizes a whole industry of people who want to make new colors. |
| 2:02.6 | And the ability to make molecules by design |
... |
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