Abstract
MR. C. T. J. CRONSHAW, director of the Dyestuffs Section of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., is this year's Jubilee Memorial lecturer for the Society of Chemical Industry, and he spoke under the title “In Quest of Colour” before a joint meeting of that society with the Institute of Chemistry in Newcastle on January 15. This proved to be a comprehensive account of the history of the dyestuffs industry in Great Britain, and traced the development and expansion of the chemist's skill and the dyer's needs since Sir W. H. Perkin's original discovery in 1856. Perhaps the most interesting section of the address was the examination of the causes which produced the rise, and then, in England, the decline of the new manufacture. In the first place, the time was ripe for such a discovery because the successful application of machinery to the textile industries and the increase in available wool (from Australia) offered almost unlimited expansion, and also as England was a wealthy country and the workshop of the world. As for the decline, Perkin himself attributed it to three causes: the Patent laws, the ease of infringement abroad, and foreign import duties. Others have blamed the textile manufacturers and the greater facilities for scientific publication in Germany at that time, but Mr. Cronshaw placed above these, lack of foresight, and the fact that the leaders of the industry retired too soon. Perkin was certainly the leading technologist of his day, and he retired at the age of thirty-six years, Caro at thirty-five in 1869, and Nicholson in 1868. Perhaps the early success was too easy, and proved to be dearly bought.
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History of Dyestuffs in Great Britain. Nature 135, 142–143 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135142c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135142c0