From our gallery of Accidental Inventions:

“Sometimes, in the pursuit of scientific endeavors, scientists become famous for reasons that don’t seem entirely scientific. Take the chemist William Perkin. His big dream was to find a cure for malaria. In 1856 the young Englishman was working on an artificial form of quinine when his experiments yielded a dark sludge. It was a disappointing result, but instead of chucking the mess, Perkin noticed the color. It was a particular shade of purple, which happened to be a hot color among the fashionable folks of the time. He was able to isolate the compound that produced the color—mauve—and realized it worked well as a dye. Within a year, Perkin patented his synthetic dye, the first synthetic dye ever made, and opened a company to make and sell it.”   

There you have it.  From malaria to mauve.

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    it, the ’70s wouldn’t have existed without science.

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