Researched
Synthetic Dyes (Mauveine)
Perkin's accidental mauve (1856) starts the coal-tar dye industry and the research-based chemical company.
Open in the interactive tree →William Perkin, aged 18, tried to make quinine and got a purple dye; BASF, Bayer and Hoechst then built dye factories with research laboratories. The same firms and methods later produced aspirin, synthetic drugs and Ehrlich's first targeted chemotherapy, Salvarsan.
Prerequisites
Unlocks
- Plastics (Bakelite to Nylon)1907-1953Coal-tar chemistry and the dye firms' labs led to synthetic polymers
- Salvarsan: the magic bullet1909Ehrlich's chemotherapy grew from dye chemistry and staining
- Sulfa drugs1935