Colour my world i But why purple? At that time, purple dye was an eee ee cet expensive substance produced in a complicated, @ Quickly read the passage below, which is about foul-smelling and time-consuming process. This the colour purple. Match the names of the people Involved bolling thousands of molluscs in water (1-6) with the thing they do or did (a-e). There is | in order to harvest their glandular juices. The ‘one person who does not match any of the letters. | technique had originally been developed by the William Perkin Phoenicians over a thousand years previously, and 2. August Wilhelm von Hofmann it hadn't changed since. Cheaper but poorer quality 3. Simon Garfield purple dyes could be made fram lichens using an 4 Queen Victoria equally messy and unpleasant procedure, but they 5. Dr Max Luscher ‘were not as bright, and the colour quickly faded. It 6 Julia Kubler ‘was no surprise, therefore, that good purple dye was ‘believed that colours could be used to treat agar precious thing anasiothondied pule ‘were beyond the financial means of most people. illnesses b_ wrote a biography about an historical figure However, times have changed. In the great € uses colours as a form of alternative medicine ‘consumer democracy of the 21st century, even the @ invented an artificial dye most humble citizen can choose it as the colour of © taught chemistry their latest outfit. For that privilege, we must thank ‘young 19th century research chemist, William Perkin, Atalented 15-year-old when he entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London in 1853, Perkin was immediately appointed as laboratory ‘assistant to hls tulor, August Wilhelm von Hofmann. He became determined to prove Hofmann’s claim that quinine, a drug used to treat fevers such as ‘malaria, could be synthesised in a laboratory. However, rather than the cure desperately needed ‘or people dying trom malaria in tropical countries, he produced litte more than a black, sticky mess that turned purple when dissolved in industrial A-19th cantuny research chemist was trying make medicine when, instead, he came up wit a coloured dye that has ensured the world is Harofis ples: alcohol. Perkin’s experiments could have been a A. Ofall the colours, purple has perhaps the most complete waste of time, but to his surprise and, Powerful connotations. From the earliest cultures ultimately, financial benefit, his purple liquid turned to the present day, people have sought to harness out to be a long-lasting dye that was to transform its visual power to mark themselves out as better fashion. than those around them. From bishops tokings, © D_ Perkin repeated his experiments in an improvised op stars to fashion models, its wearing has laboratory in his garden shed. perfectina the process been a calculated act of showing of. In ancient {for making the substance he had called mauveine Rome, for example, purple was such a revered after the French mallow plant. It was, says Simon colour that only the emperor was allowed to Garfield, the author of Mauve which details Perkin's wear it. Indeed, an emperor who was referred life and work, an astonishing breakthrough. ‘Once to as porphvrogenitus. (born to the purple’) was your enild da that you could make colour in a factos ‘especially important, since this meant that he had {rom chemicals rather than insects or plants. It inherited his position through family connections. ‘opened up the prospect of mass-produced artic rather than seizing power through military force. dyes and made Perkin one of the first scientists to @® vozbridge the gap between pure chemistry and its industrial applications.” it didn't take long for the chemist, still only 18, to capitalise on his creation, patenting the product, convincing his father and. brother to back it with savings, and finding a manufacturer who could help him bring it rap the market. The buying public loved it, and clothes coloured with purple started appearing in shops up and down the country. ‘Appropriately, considering the origins of Perkins’ colour, he was to receive a helping hand from the two most important women of the day. Queen Victoria caused a sensation when she stepped Out at the Royal Exhibition in 1862 wearing a sik gown dyed with mauveine. In Paris, Napoleon II's wife, Empress Eugenie, amazed the court when she was seen wearing it. To propel the scientist further on the way to a great fortune, the fashion of the time was for broad skirts that, happily for him, needed a lot of his revolutionary new dye. E Perkins, ever'the serious scientist, would have been among the first to point out that his mauve is just one of a range of colours described in ‘everyday language as purple. Not itself a true ‘colour of the spectrum — that position is given to indigo and violet — purple normally refers to those colours which inhabit the limits of human perception in the area between red and violet Newton excluded the colour from his colour wheel. Scientists today talk about the ‘ine of purples’ which include violet, mauve, magenta, indigo and lilac. ER LN, F In the alternative medical practice of colour therapy, which practitioners say can trace its ack to ancient India, the ‘purple range’ colours of indigo and violet are vital. They refer to spiritual energy centres known as chakras and are situated in the head. The colours and their ‘medical’ qualities were first officially listed by the Swiss scientist Dr Max Luscher, who said that appropriately coloured lights, applied to specific chakras, could treat ailments from depression to