Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:22:33.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dyeing off: On the deaths of dyestuffs as scientific objects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2022

Mat Paskins
Mat Paskins*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Between the 1870s and the 1920s, the dye industry was at the center of claims about the productivity of organic chemistry. Dyestuffs were widely represented as the most complex molecules to find commercial application, and positioned at the center of nationalist projects to establish chemical industry, especially in Britain and the United States. By the later twentieth century, the complex of scientific hopes which surrounded dyestuffs had largely disappeared. In Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s terms, they had changed from “epistemic things” to, at best, “technical objects,” and lost their future-bearing status as the lynchpin of organic chemistry. Although developments in dyeing continue, dyestuffs have vacated the scientifically and culturally dynamic position that they once occupied; any restoration of this status would require a radical change in economic and material conditions. This paper considers the senses in which this change of status should be considered as the death of dyestuffs as a scientific object.

Keywords

Dyestuffstechnical objectschemical industryWilliam PerkinsIG Farben
Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 34 , Issue 2: The Death of Scientific Objects , June 2021 , pp. 297 - 311
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aftalion, Fred. 2001. A History of the International Chemical Industry: From the Early Days to 2000. Philadelphia, Pa.: Chemical Heritage Press.Google Scholar
Agard-Jones, Vanessa. 2013. “Bodies in the System..” Small Axe 17 (3): 182–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Henry E. 1923. “Legislative and Government Interference with Industry and the Common Weal.” Chemistry and Industry 42 (5): 91–95.Google Scholar
Badino, Massimiliano and Navarro, Jaume. 2018. “Introduction. Ether – The Multiple Lives of a Resilient Concept.” In Ether and Modernity: The Recalcitrance of an Epistemic Object in the Early Twentieth Century. Edited by Navarro, Jaume, 1–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Baptista, Robert. 2012. “The Faded Rainbow: The Rise and Fall of the Western Dye Industry 1856-2000.” https://mediakron.bc.edu/fashiondecor/decor-detail-french-empire/contents/review-folder/review-for-test-2/decor-review-folder/aniline-dye, accessed 24/06/2022.Google Scholar
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. 2009. “Synthetic Biology As a Replica of Synthetic Chemistry? Uses and Misuses of History.” Biological Theory 4 (4): 314–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Board of Trade. 1914 “Minutes Of The First Meeting Of The Advisory Committee On Chemical Products, August 28, 1914.” In UK National Archives, BT 11/13.Google Scholar
Bomgardner, Melody. 2018. “These New Textile Dyeing Methods Could Make Fashion More Sustainable.” Chemical and Engineering News. https://cen.acs.org/business/consumer-products/new-textile-dyeing-methods-make/96/i29, accessed 20/10/2019.Google Scholar
Callahan, Sean. 1999. “Dupont Replaces 1935 Tagline to Reflect Corporate Change.” AdAge, 1 June, online at https://adage.com/article/btob/dupont-replaces-1935-tagline-reflect-corporate-change/247761, accessed 9/01/2020.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred. 2005. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Hasok. 2009. “We Have Never Been Whiggish (About Phlogiston).” Centaurus 51 (4): 239–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Hasok. 2010. “The Hidden History Of Phlogiston.” HYLE–International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 16 (2): 47–79.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2000. Biographies of Scientific Objects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Edgerton, David. 2006. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books.Google Scholar
Edgerton, David. 2008. “Not Counting Chemistry: How We Misread the History of Twentieth Century Science and Technology.” https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/not-counting-chemistry-how-we-misread-the-history-of-20th-century-science-and, accessed 08/01/2020.Google Scholar
Foreign Office. 1946. “Chemical Industry: Pharmaceuticals and Dyestuffs.” In UK National archives, FO 942/453.Google Scholar
Garfield, Simon. 2000. Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World. New York: W.W. Norton Company.Google Scholar
Golambos, Louis, Hikino, Takashi and Zamagni, Vera eds. 2007. The Global Chemical Industry in the Age of the Petrochemical Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hare, Ronald. 1955. Pomp and Pestilence: Infectious Disease, Its Origins and Conquest. New York: Philosophical Library Inc.Google Scholar
Heida, Lydia. 2014. “Can Waterless Dyeing Clean Up the Clothing Industry.” https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/07/21/waterless-dyeing-processes-clean-clothing-industry, accessed 20/10/2019.Google Scholar
Holly, Marc, Herm, Christoph, and Schram, Jürgen. 2019. “Colourful World—Conserving the Dye Collection of the Hochschule Niederrhein.”Poster presented at the 8th Interim Meeting of the ICOM-CC working group Art Technological Source Research, September 2019, online at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336364895_Colorful_World_-_Conserving_the_Dye_Collection_of_the_Hochschule_Niederrhein, accessed 9/01/2020.Google Scholar
Homburg, Ernst. 2018. “Chemistry and Industry: A Tale of Two Moving Targets.” Isis 109(3): 565–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hounshell, David A., Smith, John Kenly Jr. 1988. Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R and D, 1902-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Ursula. 2005. “Technoscience Avant la Lettre.” Perspectives on Science 13(2): 226–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knorr Cetina, Karin. 2008. “Objectual Practice.” In Knowledge as Social Order: Rethinking the Sociology of Barry Barnes. Edited by Mazzoti, Massimo, 83–98. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Lesch, John E. 2007. The First Miracle Drugs: How the Sulfa Drugs Transformed Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levinstein, Herbert. 1924. “Some Thoughts on the British Dyestuff Industry.” The Journal of Chemical Industry Oct 17: 1029–1033.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLeod, Christine and Radick, Gregory. 2013. “Claiming Ownership in the Technosciences: Patents, Priority and Productivity.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44(2): 188–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Peter and Travis, Anthony S.. 1992. “A History of the International Dyestuff Industry.” American Dyestuff Reporter 81: 59–59.Google Scholar
Morris, Peter JT. 2006. “Does the Science Museum, London, have Perkin’s Original Mauve Dye? A Critical Reassessment of a Chemical Icon.” History and Technology 22(2): 119–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mowbray, John. 2018. “China Shutdowns Squeeze Textile Dyeing Industry.” Ecotextile News. https://www.ecotextile.com/2018061823554/dyes-chemicals-news/china-shutdowns-squeeze-textile-dyeing-industry.html. Last accessed 24/06/2022.Google Scholar
Murmann, Johann Peter. 2003. Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navarro, Jaume ed. 2018. Ether and Modernity: The Recalcitrance of an Epistemic Object in the Early Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ndaiye, Pap. 2007, Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nieto-Galan, Agustí. 2001. Colouring Textiles: A History of Natural Dyestuffs in Industrial Europe. Dordecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickering, Andrew. 2005. “Decentering Sociology: Synthetic Dyes and Social Theory.” Perspectives on Science 13.3: 352–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollak, Peter. 2010. Fine Chemicals: The Industry and the Business. London: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Radick, Greg. 2018. “There Was No Such Thing as the Mendelian Gene and this is a Talk About It.” Talk at “How Scientific Objects End” Workshop, University of Cambridge 3-4 December 2018.Google Scholar
Rampling, Jennifer. 2018. “Envisioning ‘Perfected’ Matter: The Philosophers’ Stone as Epistemic Object.” Talk at “How Scientific Objects End” Workshop, University of Cambridge 3-4 December 2018.Google Scholar
Rampling, Jennifer. 2020. The Experimental Fire—Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1800. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reader, William J. 1970. Imperial Chemical Industries: A History [in 2 vols]. Vol.1, The Forerunners, 1870-1926. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Roosth, Sophia. 2017. Synthetic: How Life got Made. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sexton, Wilfred A. 1955. “Chemotherapeutic Research in the Laboratories of Imperial Chemical (Pharmaceuticals) Limited at Manchester.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 229(1179): 425–438.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Nicholas and Kirksey, Eben. 2017. “Chemo-ethnography: An Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 32(4): 481–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sousa, Micaela M., Melo, Maria J., Jorje Parola, A., Morris, Peter J. T., Rzepa, Henry S. and de Melo, J. Sergio Seixas. 2008. “A Study in Mauve: Unveiling Perkin’s Dye in Historic Samples.” Chemistry 14(28): 8507–8513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stanley, Albert. 1925. “Chairman’s Speech at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Shareholders of the British Dyestuffs Corporation Limited, held at the Milton Hall, Manchester on Wednesday 25th November 25th.” Reproduced in Papers Relative to the Liquidation of the Government Interests in the British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office: 10-20.Google Scholar
Steen, Kathryn. 2014. The American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry: War and Politics 1910-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travis, Anthony S. 1993. The Rainbow Makers. The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe. Bethlehem/Pa: Lehigh University Press.Google Scholar
Travis, Anthony S. 1989. “Science as Receptor of Technology: Paul Ehrlich and the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry.” Science in Context 3(2): 383–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travis, Anthony S. 2002. “Contaminated Earth and Water: a Legacy of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry.” Ambix 49(1): 21–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travis, Anthony S. 2008. “Models for Biological Research: The Theory and Practice of Paul Ehrlich.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 30: 79–97.Google ScholarPubMed
Travis, Anthony S. and Baeck, Leo. 2007. “Mauve and its Anniversaries.” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 32(1): 35–44.Google Scholar
Yeh, Brian J. and Lim, Wendell A. 2007. “Synthetic Biology: Lessons from the History of Synthetic Organic Chemistry.” Nature Chemical Biology 3(9): 521–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wainwright, Mark. 2003. “The Use of Dyes in Modern Biomedicine.” Biotechnic & Histochemistry 78(3-4): 147–155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werrett, Simon. 2019. Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar