Abstract
THE rate of progress in the dyestuff industry is admittedly far more rapid than in any other branch of applied chemistry, and the advances made during the past ten or fifteen years have effected an enormous change in the whole aspect of the subject. Very many dyestuffs of former importance have been abandoned or partially replaced, and hundreds of new dyestuffs have been introduced into commerce. New manufacturing processes have superseded older ones, and considerable improvements have been made in the methods of dyeing and printing. The majority of these advances have been directed towards securing a greater degree of fastness to washing, light, and other agencies. Thus in cotton dyeing the want of fastness of the earlier “substantive” or “salt” dye-stuffs soon led to attempts to fix these colours after dyeing, by various methods, such as by diazotisation and combination with phenols, by coupling with diazo-compounds, by treatment with formaldehyde, or by fixation with salts of copper or chromium. The introduction in 1894 of Vidal black, and the enormous extension of the group of “sulphide” dyestuffs which shortly followed, provided the cotton dyer with a class of cheap colouring matters of much greater fastness than those of the “salt” class, which they therefore largely replaced. Again, more recently the newly introduced “vat” dyes of the anthracene and indigoid classes, though at present expensive and difficult to apply, bid fair eventually to supplant the “sulphide” dyestuffs for those purposes, in which the highest degree of fastness is of paramount importance, since many members of this class exhibit a resistance to light and washing surpassing that of any of the older organic dyestuffs. On the theoretical side also considerable progress must be recorded. The constitution of many dyestuffs and dyestuff groups has been elucidated, the mechanism of reactions has been rendered clearer, and our views as to the connection of chemical structure with colour and dyeing properties have been extended.
The Chemistry of the Coal-tar Dyes.
By Prof. I. W. Fay. Pp. vi + 467. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 16s. net.
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GREEN, A. The Chemistry of the Coal-tar Dyes . Nature 88, 271 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088271a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088271a0
