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udied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at tasks too great for its powers. If he had heard this and believed it, he would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial quinine--and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline dyes. But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private laboratory so he could work over-time. While working here during the Easter vacation of 1856--the date is as well worth remembering as 1066--he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals. When he went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave a beautiful purple solution. This was "mauve," the first of the aniline dyes. The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color. It was because he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little toluidine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a lucky accident. But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of chemistry. A man may not find what he is looking for, but he never finds anything unless he is looking for something. Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it was a substance that had never existed before. Perkin's next great triumph, ten years later, was in rivaling Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter contained in the madder root. It was an ancient and oriental dyestuff, known as "Turkey red" or by its Arabic name of "alizari." When madder was introduced into France it became a profitable crop and at one time half a million tons a year were raised. A couple of French chemists, Robiquet and Colin, extracted from madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was not until forty years later that it was discovered that alizarin had for its base one of the coal-tar products, anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck race between Perkin and his German rivals to see which could discover a cheap process for making alizarin from anthracene. The German chemists beat him to the patent office by one day! Graebe and Liebermann filed their application for a patent on
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