re: Friedrich Bayer and Friedrich Weskott were two buddies who set up an international paint and dye company in Germany in 1863. Scientists in 1886 discovered an antipyretic painkiller could be manufactured from the waste of one of the dye products. So, in 1888, the pair set up a pharmaceutical department." I never knew that aspirin was developed from waste, esp. from waste that was likely to be poisonous.)

they were working with 'coal tars'-- a sticky residue left over from coke productions (coke is made by heating coal with little or no oxigen present--with out oxigen, the coal can't really 'burn' but it smokes.. the smoke collects and becomes a sticy tar like substance--the coal is changed into coke --which has been purified by the process, and has become 99.9% pure carbon, and the coal tar was at first condidered 'waste')

some englishman (actually thinking about it, i think it was a scot) found you could 'do stuff' with coal tar.. but the germans really took coal tar to the limit, coar tar was one of the great new raw material of the industrial revolution.

dyes (new colors of dye, too) were one of the first products.. The imfamous 'red dye #2' that is now banned from foods--is a good example--it is a early coal tar derivitive.
asprin, and sacherine too... came from coal tars

and in the process of 'fracturing coal tars', chemistry as an industry was born .. (companies like duPont that we now think of as chemical companies started as munnitions companies..they worked with another 'carbon'--charcoal--and Nitrogen--...

in the late 1800, the 'language of science' (at least chemistry) was german. knowing the language was part of a chemist training, since all the really important papers and work were being done in germany.

(previously, latin was the universal language of science, but Newton, (who published in Latin) was one of the last great/famous one to do so)

by the beginning of the 1800's scientists (as pointed out, a new word at the time, and a new 'concept') were writting and publishing in their own languages. but all of them relied on some latin and greek for making up chemical names.




my other obsession