think of was that he had brought some chemical along from the laboratory. Rushing back to it and carefully investigating the taste of all the goblets, glasses and dishes standing on the working table, he finally came across one whose contents seemed to possess a remarkably sweet taste. Thus was made this remarkable discovery.’
Fahlberg had stumbled upon saccharin, four pounds of which possessed the sweetening power of a ton of beet sugar. He conducted some researches to find whether it was harmful to animals, and, no adverse effects being detected, was soon hailed as the founder of a huge new industry. At the time of the banquet in New York, the United States government had imposed laws banning saccharin as a sugar replacement in food on account of the devastating effects it was having on the sugar industry. This story was particularly appreciated by Professor Ira Remsen, who sat two places away from William Perkin on the top table. Fahlberg was working in Remsen’s laboratory at the time of this incident.
Meanwhile, Dr Schweitzer was reaching a conclusion, and briefly mentioned that Perkin was, predictably by this stage, very much responsible for the way women smelt, having once formed coumarin from coal-tar, which led to artificial musk, and then to the artificial production of the scents of violets, roses, jasmine and the ‘smell of the year’ – oil of wintergreen.
The same compound which formed artificial perfume was subsequently used with nitroglycerine as an explosive in the mines and as a weapon (‘the smokeless powder of the Russo-Japanese war’). Soldiers would also be grateful to Perkin for artificial salicylic and benzoic acids, both used to preserve canned foods.
At the beginning of the evening, a photographer had climbed on a ladder in the corner of the room and asked everyone to turn their chairs to face him. Almost everyone looked his way apart from Perkin, who chose to look ahead into the middle distance (Perkin was interested in the use of bags to take up the smoke of the flashlight, thus limiting the fumes of magnesium). The trick was, the photographer knew, ‘I can see you if you can see me’ and today we can still see them all – a remarkable record of the most distinguished chemists of the day trying their best to keep their eyes open for the duration of the long exposure.
The art of photography, naturally, was greatly enhanced by Perkin. At the time of the dinner, coal-tar preparations were responsible for the development of films and plates, and coal-tar colours improved the sensitivity of photographic emulsion, thus making it suitable for everyday snapshots. Further, in that very year, Auguste and Louis Lumière introduced Autochrome plates, the first practical application of coal-tar colour materials in photography.
Clearly, the speaker concluded, ‘the world cannot spare such an extraordinary man. May his life be spared to us for many years to come, and may it be replete with health and happiness.’
This tone was sustained when Dr William Nichols, president of the US General Chemical Company, presented Perkin with the first gold impression of the Perkin Medal, henceforth to be awarded annually to only the most distinguished of American chemists. Charged with drink and the desire to better all that had gone before, Dr Nichols went for the big finish. This is the age of destruction, he announced, but his fellow chemists had a mission, and it was no less than ‘saving the world from starvation’.
‘Honoured by your king, by your fellow chemists, by the world,’ Nichols said, as he looked down the table to Perkin, ‘you may pass down the hillsides toward the setting sun with a clear conscience. You have seen the dawn of the golden age – the age of chemistry – that science which by synthesis will gather together the fragments and wastes of the other dynasties, and build for the world a civilisation which will last until the end.’
Then he sat down. A few places down the table Adolf Kutroff removed his napkin. Kutroff was one of the pioneers of the coal-tar industry in the United States, and tonight had the task of presenting Perkin with an eight-piece silver tea service, each piece inscribed with the details of one of the Englishman’s discoveries.
At the very end of the dinner, and just at that time when the evening’s alcohol was beginning its downward path towards stupor and headache, Sir William himself got up to speak. The crowd roused themselves once more, and really cheered. He had a deep, clear voice, and he blinked a lot as he spoke, perhaps out of modesty and shyness. Those next to him at his table noticed how he had not been drinking at all – he had been teetotal for many years. He held in his hand the speech he had written on the Umbria, but his first words were a mass of improvised retorts; they had thanked him, and so he must thank them, and they could have gone on back and forth like that all night. It was twenty-four years since he had last been to New York, and on his last trip far fewer people seemed to know who he was. But everything now was a great honour – the library, the medal, the tea service. ‘I do not feel strange with you,’ he said. ‘And it may perhaps interest you to know something of my early days and how I became a chemist.’
He spoke for ten minutes about his school and his great discovery, and of the hard time he had convincing others that he had found something that might be of significance – and yet he said that even he didn’t dream of what that significance might be. He was only eighteen, after all. Who else could have imagined that this filthy thick coal-tar could contain all it did? And he was lucky, because it transpired that his great invention occurred purely by chance, and it was not what he was looking for at all.
Tumult as he sat down. More toasts. Sighs as other men got up. Dr Nicholas Buller, President of Columbia, declared that democracy depends on scientific discovery. ‘The age wants the man who knows. The nation will most progress that follows the advice of the men who know. The guest of the evening is a man who knows.’
Dr Ira Remsen said he knew it was getting late, but there was surely time for another rendition of ‘Blessed Be the Tie that Binds.’ It was a suitable song, he said. ‘A pun.’
After this, the eminent scientists hailed carriages for home, or to their Manhattan hotels, and perhaps they told their partners that it had been an historical evening, and what great food. Then they all did one identical thing. Their invitation to this jubilee announced that it was a black-tie affair, but with a twist. Their dinner jackets were to be black, but their bow-ties were to be of a different colour, in recognition of the colour that had started it all off for Perkin, the colour that had chanced to change the world.
Two weeks before the event, each of the diners received a brown envelope containing a new necktie, dyed for the occasion by the St Denis Dyestuff and Chemical Company, France. The colour was often identified as a shade of purple, but for one night only there would be no mistaking its precise hue.
The men all wore it to the banquet, and now, well past midnight, they each removed it, and perhaps made a mental note to keep it safe, a perfect souvenir from a famous night in honour of a man who had invented the colour mauve.
Chapter Two
Not the Land of Science
Sugar Ray Leonard slipped out of his red and black Ferrari Boxer Berlinetta, strode through the front door of Jamesons restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland, and made his way to the bar. Leonard always seems to be the handsomest man in the room, especially when someone calls his name and he flashes that dazzling smile, and on this August afternoon he looked as if he had stepped right out of the pages of GQ.
He wore a mauve cardigan, a light mauve shirt with the cuffs folded meticulously over the sweaters’ cuffs, mauve suspenders embroidered with figures of Cupid.
‘I feel great, I really do,’ Leonard said.
Former World Welterweight Boxing Champion Sugar Ray Leonard profiled in Sports Illustrated, 1986
In May 1956, precisely one century after the discovery
