Chemical Industry Advances: Dyes, Fertilizers, and the Modern Chemical Industry

The chemical industry was another defining industry of the Second Industrial Revolution. The development of new processes for producing chemicals, including synthetic dyes, fertilizers, explosives, and pharmaceuticals, transformed the production of chemicals and laid the foundation for the modern pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

The Birth of the Modern Chemical Industry

The modern chemical industry was born in the mid-nineteenth century, with the development of new processes for producing chemicals that had previously been available only in small quantities from natural sources. The Solvay process, developed by the Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay in the 1860s, was a more efficient method of producing soda ash. The contact process, developed in the 1880s, was a more efficient method of producing sulfuric acid.

Synthetic Dyes

One of the most important developments in the chemical industry was the production of synthetic dyes. Before the 1850s, dyes were produced from natural sources, including plants, animals, and minerals. The development of synthetic dyes, beginning with William Henry Perkin’s mauveine in 1856, transformed the dye industry and laid the foundation for the modern organic chemical industry. The article on aniline dyes describes this important development in more detail.

Fertilizers and the Haber Process

The development of the chemical industry was also closely tied to the production of fertilizers. Before the late nineteenth century, fertilizers were produced from natural sources, including animal manure, bones, and guano. The development of new processes for producing synthetic fertilizers made possible a dramatic increase in agricultural productivity.

The most important of these processes was the Haber process, developed by the German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909, which made possible the synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen. The article on the Haber process describes this important development in more detail.

Pharmaceuticals

The chemical industry was also important for the development of the modern pharmaceutical industry. The early twentieth century saw the development of many important new drugs, including aspirin, the first widely used synthetic drug, developed by Bayer in 1899.

The German Chemical Industry

The German chemical industry was the most successful in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The German success was based on a combination of factors, including a strong tradition of scientific research in German universities, a close relationship between the chemical industry and the universities, and a willingness to invest heavily in research and development.

Perkin’s Mauveine and the Synthetic Dye Revolution

The synthesis of mauveine, the first aniline dye, by William Henry Perkin in 1856 is conventionally dated as the beginning of the modern organic chemical industry. Perkin, an 18-year-old student at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, was attempting to synthesize quinine from coal tar when he accidentally produced a brilliant purple dye, which he patented in August 1856 and marketed as “mauve.” The dye was an immediate commercial success: the French Empress Eugénie wore a mauveine-dyed gown at the Paris Opera in 1859, and the British and French courts followed. The German dye industry, founded on the work of chemists like Peter Griess, Carl Graebe, and Carl Liebermann in the 1860s and 1870s, soon overtook the British, and by 1880 the German firms BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, and Cassella were the largest in the world. The German dominance rested on a system of patents and tariffs that protected the new industry from foreign competition, and on the system of industrial research that the German firms pioneered. The development of synthetic dyes is the subject of John Joseph Beer’s The Emergence of the German Dye Industry (1959) and of Anthony S. Travis’s The Rainbow Makers (1993).

The Solvay and Haber Processes

The two most consequential inorganic chemical processes of the late nineteenth century were the Solvay process for the production of soda ash (sodium carbonate) and the Haber process for the synthesis of ammonia. The Solvay process, developed by the Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay in the 1860s, replaced the older Leblanc process and produced soda ash — a key raw material for soap, glass, and the textile industry — at a fraction of the cost. The Solvay process was rapidly adopted in Britain, Germany, and the United States, and by 1900 the Solvay Company and its licensees controlled 90 percent of the world production of soda ash. The Haber process, developed by Fritz Haber at the University of Karlsruhe in 1909 and scaled up by Carl Bosch at BASF in 1910, made possible the synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen. The Haber-Bosch process, as it came to be known, was the foundation of the modern synthetic fertilizer industry, and it is estimated that the nitrogen fixed by the process has supported the food supply of perhaps 3 to 4 billion people since its development. The two processes are also the basis for the modern petrochemical industry: the Haber process, in particular, was the foundation for the German explosives industry in the First World War, and the Solvay process for the chlor-alkali industry that produces the chlorine and caustic soda used in the modern chemical industry.

The Pharmaceutical Industry and the German Dye Firms

The German dye firms, particularly Bayer and BASF, were the first to develop the modern pharmaceutical industry, and they are the model for the research-based, vertically integrated chemical firm of the twentieth century. The first drug produced by a dye firm was phenacetin, introduced by Bayer in 1887, but the most important was aspirin, introduced by Bayer in 1899 and still one of the most widely used drugs in the world. The development of Heroin (Bayer, 1898), Veronal (Bayer, 1903), and Salvarsan (Hoechst, 1910) established the model of drug discovery that was later followed by the American firms Merck, Pfizer, and Squibb. The 1925 Bayer-Monsanto agreement, in which Bayer licensed its chemical patents to the American firm in exchange for access to the American market, was a key step in the globalization of the chemical industry. The 1925 consolidation of the German chemical industry, which formed IG Farben from the merger of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, and other firms, was the largest single industrial merger in history to that point. The IG Farben empire was, in turn, broken up after the Second World War by the Allied occupation authorities, and the successor firms — BASF, Bayer, Hoechst (now part of Sanofi) — became the three largest chemical firms in Europe.

The American Chemical Industry: Du Pont and the Research-Based Firm

The American chemical industry developed in parallel with the German, but with a different structure. The largest American firm, Du Pont, was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine River, and it remained a single-product firm for most of the nineteenth century. The transformation of Du Pont from a single-product gunpowder firm to a diversified chemical firm was the work of the Du Pont family and of the professional managers who came in after the death of the senior partners in the 1890s. The introduction of the modern research laboratory at Du Pont’s Experimental Station in 1903 and the development of a research-based strategy in the 1910s and 1920s, especially under the leadership of Pierre S. du Pont and Charles M. A. Stine, was the American counterpart of the German model. Du Pont’s introduction of cellophane, nylon, neoprene, and many other products was the basis for its success in the inter-war period, and the firm became the largest chemical company in the world by 1930. The development of the American chemical industry is the subject of Alfred D. Chandler Jr.’s Strategy and Structure (1962) and of David A. Hounshell and John Kenly Smith Jr.’s Science and Corporate Strategy (1988), which traces the development of the research-based firm at Du Pont in detail.

The Chemicals of the First World War

The chemical industry was central to the conduct of the First World War, and the war transformed the industry in turn. The British naval blockade of Germany cut off the supply of Chilean nitrates, on which the German explosives industry depended, and the Haber-Bosch process became the basis for the German war production. The introduction of mustard gas by the German army at Ypres in July 1917 and of phosgene by the French earlier in the war marked the beginning of modern chemical warfare. The use of poison gas at Ypres, and the subsequent development of the gas mask and other protective equipment, established the dual relationship between the chemical industry and the military that has continued into the twenty-first century. The Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919, prohibited the use of chemical weapons in future wars, but the chemical industry continued to develop new agents, and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 was a renewed effort to ban the use of chemical weapons. The war’s effect on the chemical industry was to accelerate the consolidation of the largest firms and to establish the relationship between the industry and the state that has been a defining feature of the industry since 1918.

The Long-Term Impact

The chemical industry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries laid the foundation for the modern chemical, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries. The Haber-Bosch process alone is estimated to support the food supply of perhaps half of the world’s current population, and the synthetic dye industry gave rise to the modern pharmaceutical industry, the photographic industry, the explosives industry, and the plastics industry. The principal firms of the period — BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Du Pont, Dow, Monsanto, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI, 1926), and Rhône-Poulenc (1928) — were among the largest and most profitable in the world by 1930, and they have continued to play a central role in the global chemical industry to the present. The current concerns about the environmental impact of the chemical industry — the Bhopal disaster of 1984, the role of chlorofluorocarbons in the depletion of the ozone layer, the use of DDT and other persistent organic pollutants — are in many ways the long-term consequences of the rapid expansion of the industry in the period 1870-1914. The environmental history of the chemical industry is the subject of Christoph R. J. H. Rosar and of J. R. McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun (2000), and it remains an active area of historical research.

Plastics, Petroleum, and the Modern Petrochemical Industry

The development of the petrochemical industry in the 20th century was a direct consequence of the chemical innovations of the 1870s-1910s, and it transformed the modern economy. The first fully synthetic plastic, Bakelite, was developed by Leo Baekeland in 1907, and it was the basis of the modern plastics industry. The polyethylene developed by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson of Imperial Chemical Industries in 1933, and the nylon developed by Wallace Carothers of Du Pont in 1935, were the foundations of the modern synthetic fiber and plastics industries. The petrochemical industry — based on the refining of crude oil into gasoline, kerosene, and the basic feedstocks for the plastics industry — became the largest segment of the chemical industry in the 20th century, and the Standard Oil, Shell, Exxon, and Mobil companies were the principal actors. The plastic pollution of the world’s oceans, the role of fossil fuels in climate change, and the long-term environmental costs of the petrochemical industry are all direct consequences of the developments that began with Perkin’s mauveine in 1856. The history of the petrochemical industry is the subject of Robert P. Taylor’s studies and of John P. Holdren’s essays on the environmental consequences of the chemical industry.

The Fertilizer Revolution and the Global Food Supply

The development of the modern fertilizer industry was a direct consequence of the chemical innovations of the 1870s-1910s, and it was central to the 20th-century increase in agricultural productivity. The Solvay process for soda ash, the contact process for sulfuric acid, and the Haber-Bosch process for ammonia were the three most important innovations, and they were the basis for the production of the three principal fertilizers — nitrogen, phosphate, and potash. The German dye firms, particularly BASF, were the principal producers of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the early 20th century, and the British, American, and Japanese firms entered the market after 1920. The 1909 discovery of the Chilean caliche deposits, which contain large amounts of sodium nitrate, was a major source of nitrogen fertilizer in the 19th century, and the development of the synthetic ammonia industry gradually displaced the Chilean industry. The 1930s saw the development of the mixed fertilizer industry, in which the three principal nutrients were mixed in the proper proportions for particular crops and soils. The 20th-century increase in agricultural productivity, which has allowed the world’s population to grow from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 8 billion in 2022, was due in part to the increased use of fertilizers, and the green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was based on the new high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and maize that responded to heavy fertilizer use. The history of the fertilizer industry is the subject of Vaclav Smil’s Enriching the Earth (2001) and of T. P. Hildyard’s The Food Industry (1956).

Key Dates in the Chemical Industry

A short chronology of the principal dates in the history of the chemical industry:

1856 — William Henry Perkin synthesizes mauveine
1860s — Solvay process developed
1869 — Celluloid, the first synthetic plastic, invented by John Wesley Hyatt
1880s — Contact process for sulfuric acid
1887 — Artificial fertilizer industry founded at BASF
1899 — Bayer introduces aspirin
1907 — Leo Baekeland develops Bakelite
1909 — Fritz Haber develops the ammonia synthesis
1910 — Carl Bosch scales up the Haber process
1910 — Synthetic indigo production at BASF
1925 — IG Farben formed
1935 — Wallace Carothers develops nylon at Du Pont
1939 — Polystyrene introduced by BASF
1941 — ICI’s Terylene polyester
1948 — DDT banned in U.S. for agricultural use
1970 — Clean Air Act in the U.S.

In this section

Aniline Dyes The story of the aniline dyes, from William Henry Perkin's mauveine of 1856 to the German dominance of the global synthetic dye industry. The Haber Process The story of the Haber process, the German invention that made possible the synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and transformed global agriculture.