The German Genius

rosaniline, he was soon able to demonstrate its structural relation to aniline yellow, aniline blue, and imperial purple, all of which had recently been discovered. 13 Because of these results, it now became possible to manipulate systematically the basic rosaniline structure, adding new functional groups that altered the shade produced. Hofmann himself manufactured triethyl and trimethyl rosaniline, two spectacular dyes marketed under the trade name “Hofmann’s violet.” 14
    According to John Beer in his celebrated study of the German dye industry, these five dyes—mauve, fuchsin, aniline blue, yellow, and imperial purple—“were the most important coal tar colors that the young aniline dye industry produced…It was only five years since the industry had been founded and yet already twenty-nine dye manufacturing companies in western Europe were doing well enough to risk their reputation in international competition.” But Beer also shows that, over the next decade, while the German industry went from strength to strength, both the French and the British industries faded. “The French industry failed to prosper owing to a lack of trained technicians and the excessively theoretical approach of the École Polytechnique, whereas the British industry declined after 1873, partly because of the backward state of organic chemistry (which Hofmann had tried to rectify), an unwillingness by English capitalists to back research, and because the profession of chemist or engineer carried little prestige in intellectual circles or society at large.” 15
    In marked contrast, the German and Swiss dye industries prospered by copying French and British processes—from Bessemer steel to waterproof paper. Scores of Germans learned their trade in Britain before returning to Germany. One important effect of this was to increase Germany’s cloth output as much as fivefold in woolens between 1842 and 1864, and fourfold in cotton between 1836 and 1861. 16
    Two other factors contributed to the German and Swiss successes. These were the creation of polytechnic institutes and of factory research laboratories, which together supported the industry’s ever-increasing need for trained scientists and engineers. 17
    The polytechnic institute ( technische Hochschule ) was modeled after the École Polytechnique that Napoleon founded in Paris for the training of mechanical, civil, and military engineers. It took the German Hochschulen quite some time to catch on and catch up, but during the 1860s and 1870s a concerted drive was begun to achieve for them full equality with the traditional universities. They were helped by the expansion of engineering owing to the advances in the understanding of electricity, magnetism, and the conservation of energy, the new forms of transport (railways and shipping in particular), and the other advances in higher mathematics, physics, and chemistry covered in previous chapters. Gradually, the matriculation standards were increased until they were on a par with the universities—so much so that, by 1900, the “Diplom Ingenieur” was the equal of a doctorate, and generally preferred by industry. 18 The polytechnics were subsequently allowed to confer the degree/title of “Doctor,” removing the stigma hitherto attached to “engineer.”
    The creation of the factory laboratory was an event “whose historical significance…lies in the changes it brought about in the techniques of scientific research—changes that accelerated man’s control over nature to such an extent that every major institution has since been affected.” Not only that but the cooperation of several specialists produced faster results than did individual inquiry “and so arose the research team, directed by a research director…Places could thus be found for impractical but gifted theorisers, for purely ‘gadget-minded’ but skilful experimenters and for those who were poor observers but could make links between newly discovered and old facts.” The German dye industry won its ascendancy “by wrenching thousands of little facts from nature by massed assault.” 19
    Perhaps the great achievement of the laboratory was the way it transformed the coal-tar dye industry into the pharmaceuticals industry. 20 Pharmaceuticals came into their own during the 1880s and 1890s, partly because it was now that anesthetics began to be generally used, chloroform and ether becoming profitable substances for the dye companies to manufacture.