Appropriately enough, it comes from coal-
Mauveine, also known as aniline purple and Perkin's mauve, was one of the first synthetic dyes. It was discovered serendipitously by William Henry Perkin in 1856 while he was attempting to synthesise the phytochemical quinine for the treatment of malaria. It is also among the first chemical dyes to have been mass-produced.
Mauveine is a mixture of four related aromatic compounds differing in number and placement of methyl groups. Its organic synthesis involves dissolving aniline, p-toluidine, a...
Sir William Henry Perkin FRS (12 March 1838 – 14 July 1907) was a British chemist and entrepreneur best known for his serendipitous discovery of the first commercial synthetic organic dye, mauveine, made from aniline. Though he failed in trying to synthesise quinine for the treatment of malaria, he became successful in the field of dyes after his first discovery at the age of 18.
Perkin set up a factory to produce the dye industrially. Lee Blaszczyk, professor of business history at the Univer...
The dye was so popular that the 1890s have been called the “mauve decade” So the use of the colour is actually really contemporary to the play, which came out in 1895
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