In 1856, Henry Perkin, a talented 18-year old student in London’s Royal College of Chemistry, failed in his attempt to synthesize quinine from coal tar for the treatment of malaria.
During his failure, he found that the extracted aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple color (mauve). He was fascinated with this color, due to his interests in painting and photography, and carried out further off-campus experiments in his garden. One test indicated that silk cloth could be dyed and the dye remained stable when washed or exposed to light. After confirming the potential value of his finding with the owner of a major dye works in Scotland, Perkin applied for a patent.
His discovery essentially founded a new science-based industry – manufacture of synthetic dyes.
Until his discovery, dyes were natural substances extracted from plants and animals.
Source: “Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World”, S. Garfield, 2000