Chance Discoveries: Synthetic Dye

This NBC News Learn video, part of a series on "Chance Discoveries" in chemistry, tells the story of the discovery of the first synthetic dye, mauvine (or mauve) in 1856, by a teenaged British chemist trying to make a synthetic quinine to treat malaria in the expanding British colonies. (Images Courtesy of BASF Coorporate Archives, Science Museum London/SSPL, Williams Haynes Portrait Collections, from the collections of the Chemical Heritage Foundation; Gift of Herb Pratt, From the collections of the Chemical Heritage Foundation; Photograph by Gregory Tobias, Gift of American Cyanamid, from the collections of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Dr. Morley Read / Photo Researchers, Inc.)