From process to plant: innovation in the early artificial dye industry

The rise of the synthetic dye industry was based on exciting discoveries of nineteenthcentury chemists. They prepared in their laboratories, from components of coal tar, coloured substances with potentially promising dyeing properties.1 However, this was only part of the story. The development of a laboratory recipe for a synthetic dyestuff into an efficient and profitable industrial process calls for knowledge and skills other than those obtained by chemical training, and for facilities rather different from those present in a chemical laboratory. Throughout the nineteenth century scale-up could only be carried out in the factory itself, by people who contributed technical, chemical, or management skills. The products of this development are the chemical appliances, organized in chemical plants. Around 1860, at the beginning of the synthetic dye industry, such appliances were primitive and their use was labour-intensive. Thirty years later process plant was already sophisticated and the industry had become capital-intensive. These developments are the subject of this paper. Information about the industrial processes and the chemical plants of the nineteenthcentury synthetic dye industry is scattered and invariably incomplete. There are a number of important printed sources, especially contemporary handbooks, monographs, dictionaries and encyclopedias, patents, articles in chemical and technical journals, and