Synthetic colorant

Tassels dyed with BASF dyes 1901

A colorant is any substance that changes the spectral transmittance or reflectance of a material.[1] Synthetic colorants are those created in a laboratory or industrial setting. The production and improvement of colorants was a driver of the early synthetic chemical industry, in fact many of today's largest chemical producers started as dye-works in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, including Bayer AG(1863).[2] Synthetics are extremely attractive for industrial and aesthetic purposes as they have they often achieve higher intensity and color fastness than comparable natural pigments and dyes used since ancient times. Market viable large scale production of dyes occurred nearly simultaneously in the early major producing countries Britain (1857), France (1858), Germany (1858), and Switzerland (1859), and expansion of associated chemical industries followed.[3] The mid-nineteenth century through WWII saw an incredible expansion of the variety and scale of manufacture of synthetic colorants. Synthetic colorants quickly became ubiquitous in everyday life, from clothing to food. This stems from the invention of industrial research and development laboratories in the 1870s, and the new awareness of empirical chemical formulas as targets for synthesis by academic chemists. The dye industry became one of the first instances where directed scientific research lead to new products, and the first where this occurred regularly.

  1. ^ Malacara, Daniel (2011-08-04). Color Vision and Colorimetry: Theory and Applications, Second Edition. doi:10.1117/3.881172. ISBN 9780819483980.
  2. ^ MacLeod, Roy (2003). "Toward a New SynthesisErnst Homburg;, Anthony S. Travis;, Harm G. Schröter (Editors). The Chemical Industry in Europe, 1850–1914: Industrial Growth, Pollution, and Professionalization. (Chemists and Chemistry, 17.) viii + 344 pp., illus., tables, index. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. $155, Nlg 285". Isis. 94 (1): 114–116. doi:10.1086/376104. ISSN 0021-1753. S2CID 146874448.
  3. ^ Murmann, Johann Peter; Homburg, Ernst (2002). "Comparing evolutionary dynamics across different national settings: the case of the synthetic dye industry, 1857–1914". Journal of Evolutionary Economics. 11 (2): 177–205. doi:10.1007/pl00003863. ISSN 0936-9937. S2CID 12992663.