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Selected Shades of Mauve

The color Mauve is a happy scientific accident we owe to an enterprising young British chemist, a failed search for a malaria cure, and the powerful chemical properties inherent in byproducts of coal tar derivatives. A witches brew of beauty and profit. More below.*

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British Chemist, William Henry Perkin, Aged 18 (1856)

Our national election is less than 60 days away. We all pay attention to constantly changing nationwide poll numbers as if we are watching a horse race. But we do not have a single popular vote democratic election for president in America.

Here is a timeline chart of national poll numbers for the Presidential election since June 2015 from the respected polling aggregator HuffPost Pollster through September 11, 2016 (a period of 16 months, including the entire time Trump has campaigned).

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It is fun to look at, but is much less informative than examining the battleground polls described below. I recommend very limited consumption of national poll figures trend lines, and essentially ignoring individual poll results, however comforting they may appear at first glance. There’s always a worm in the mix.

One consistent nationwide trend you might take notice of is the bar at 44% (added). The whole time Trump hasn’t broken this support level to the upside, and Clinton hasn’t broken it to the downside. In modern America you must receive at least 49% of the vote, if you are to win (even with the Supreme Court’s political help (George Bush, 2000). 44% just won’t cut it. So far, Trump’s national polling peak was around February 2016, and he has slipped a couple points since then. He badly needs to step up his game in the next 8 weeks, or he will get sent home with no trophy.

Our hallowed electoral system is actually 50 (really 51, if you count the District of Columbia) separate simultaneous popular one-man (er, person) one-vote elections, Each of these 50 elections is population weighted, and the Presidential winner is the one candidate who gets 270 or more of the total of 538 electoral votes at stake every four years. No holdovers or do-overs.

A Short Demographic Diversion

From before school age, we have all been taught to look at and interpret maps. The default presentation for most maps is the best geographical representation of our 3D round universe in a 2D flat paper plane. That’s mostly OK, since we humans can’t travel(walk, ride or fly) fast enough to interact with the earth curvature effects of the planet (except maybe during space flight for a few dozen men and women so far in history).

The outline shape of the United States is essentially burned into our brains from our earliest youth, and most Americans can recognize numerous state outlines on a standard map, even without printed names.

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But geographical mapping by geographical size can be deceptive. Our election system is not based on the number of acres within a state border, but only on the population total of citizens who dwell there. So a state small in land area can be large in election effect, contrary to the usual map picture we are used to.

There are a number of cartographic techniques that are intended to better represent physical features like population, or natural resources, rather than the typical extent of land areas, but these mappings almost always seem off to us, somehow artificial and distorted.

The US has 2.3 billion acres (lower 48 have 1.9 billion) and 50 states, so the average is 46 million acres per state (39 million without Alaska). The 50-state US population is 320.7 million (2015), so the average state population is 6.4 million. Averages can be deceptive too, and make less sense when the sizes within a group run from very large to very small. Our countries population differences by state are no more extreme than our land size variances. So we deal with it. That’s life.

So we normally stick to our familiar land based maps, even though they offer a distorted picture of election reality. The complex mixture of land area and population density gives us some peculiar looking results on the surface. Thus, Texas is big both ways (171 million acres and 27.5 million people) (#1 and #2), while California is smaller in area (101 million acres), but the big enchilada in electoral votes and influence (39.1 million population) (#3 and #1). New Jersey is small in size (4.5 million acres) (#41), but concentrated in voting power (9.0 million) (#11). Wisconsin (34.8 million acres and 5.8 million population) (#24 and #20) and Georgia (37 million acres and 10.2 million population) (#21 and #8) are both about medium size and medium or higher (Georgia) voting influence.

However, we have a built-in bias that simple size matters. So we accept intuitively Texas should be important, and it is (38 electoral votes). But California is even more important (55 votes), because of its greater population. Even though it is smaller than Texas in land area. California is one thing.

But how about New Jersey or Maryland? These smaller states have way more electoral votes than their geography would warrant. This causes a sort of unconscious cognitive dissonance as we look at a typical outline electoral map.

That’s why in 2012 Republicans won 24 states with lots of land mass, but they start were beaten soundly by Democrats 332-206 in electoral votes, a margin of 61% more votes, based on just two more states in their win column.

2016 Battleground States Significance

The final electoral cartographic mind-twist is the concept of battleground states. Over time most states have fairly predictable and stable voting patterns. They are red or blue. For the last several election cycles that stable pattern number of states has typically occurred in 39 of our 50 states.

Hence we have the useful political shorthand of battleground (swing) states. For the last several election cycles, those most significant battlegrounds have been New Hampshire (NH), Pennsylvania (PA), Virginia (VA), North Carolina (NC), Florida (FL), Ohio (OH), Michigan (MI), Wisconsin (WI), Iowa (IA), Colorado (CO), and Nevada (NV). This year Arizona (AZ) and Georgia (GA) have been added to the list, for a 2016 total of 13 battlegrounds.

Nearly all polling and political forecasting experts agree that, barring a catastrophic event causing a late breaking blow out (unexpected October surprise), the election will be determined by the results in these 13 battleground states. Not the 13 original colonies, but our 21st century virtual equivalent for deciding our next President. If you want to know who will win the 2016 election, figure out who wins the magic 13 sample.

In 2012, 10 of the usual 11 swing states voted Democratic (all save North Carolina). The 12th and 13th 2016 additions voted Republican in 2012. If the 2016 map echoes the 2012 results, Trump and the Republicans will lose the electoral vote by 332-206, a substantial defeat (126 vote margin). In order for Trump to win, he must win at least 64 electoral votes that went Democratic last time, or he is out of luck. No easy task, even in a good political environment for Republicans (lousy economy, bad job numbers, weak stock market, low Presidential approval ratings).Right now, none of these ancillary factors are helping their cause.

The entire election scene is fascinating, but unless you have lots of leisure time, money to spare, or a professional obsessive involvement, the crux of the election process can be boiled down to the battleground state outcomes. Therefore the most relevant numbers to follow are the continuous polling trends in the 13 battleground states.

HuffPost Pollster and RealClearPolitics Poll Tracker Comparison

There are many reliable sources of information for the interested citizen to follow along, without a massive investment of time and energy. Two of the best and most comprehensive are the HuffPost Pollster and The RealClearPolitics Poll Tracker. Details about their methods and sources are found at each site (for those technically or mathematically inclined).

Neither of these organizations is completely free of political leanings, though they each expend considerable effort to reduce bias in their data presentation.** One good way to ensure accuracy is that both are polling aggregates. All reasonably well-conducted polls which provide a minimum of basic information about their methodology and survey techniques are included in their reported results, to make a sort of average of averages. Basic statistical theory tells us that averages of averages, where many samples are represented in full, gives the most stable estimates, and the highest likelihood of including the true state of affairs being sampled.

That is why both HuffPost Pollster and RealClearPolitics Poll Tracker present all the relevant poll data, and don’t rely on a single type of poll or polling organization for their best estimates.

HuffPost Pollster Presentation Style and the Mauve Effect

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Bands of Mauve

There is an inescapable amount of error in any poll, which is a partial sample of a large event moving toward a specific conclusion in (now) a fixed 60 day time frame. This margin of uncertainty is represented statistically by a confidence interval. It can be shown as a ± numerical result like that commonly seen with polls (as in RealClear Politics). Or it can be shown as a graphical cloud band around a best estimate result, with high and low boundaries, as in the Huffington Post graphs.

By convention, HuffPost Pollster uses red for Republicans and blue for Democratic support. Results for both are graphed along a timeline for each state of interest. Individual polls are marked by dots.

If the poll results are widely divergent, there is no overlap between the boundaries (confidence intervals) marked for Red and Blue, and the colors are distinctly separated. If the results are closer to each other, there is an increasing amount of overlap between the confidence intervals bands, for red and blue poll estimates.

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Artistic Geometric Decorative Pattern in Mauve

This is where the magic of Mauve comes in.*** The greater the zone of overlap (the closer the best estimates of actual support are to each other, the more Mauve is seen in the graph. No mauve, the poll result (at this point in time) is not squishy. One side or another is in the lead. Lots of Mauve, the poll result is muddy or uncertain, and there is no clear leader.

Enough Mauve and we have a virtual tie in this snapshot. Anyone may win.

The Mauve Index is a rapid shorthand way of telling who’s up in any battleground state, and how the race is changing (if it is) over time.

The power of this technique depends on the care and completeness of recording the underlying poll data. If there is very accurate inclusion of relevant poll results, the results are correspondingly very accurate. Fiddle with the data, or poor attention to details and methods, results are less reliable, and may fool the unsuspecting viewer.

Nobody’s perfect, but HuffPost Pollster and ReakClearPolitics Poll Tracker are two of the very best we have. The Mauve Index described here uses the HuffPost Pollster results, since they are already converted to a graphical (color picture) form. If you are a spreadsheet (Excel) fan, you can derive the same information picture by using RealClear Politics Poll Tracker results and graphing them.

The Mauve Index (Derived from HuffPost Pollster Charts)

Three Non-Swing State Appetizers

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To start, let’s consider three non swingy states in the 2016 election: California, Kansas, and Texas. One blue, two red. Unless Hell freezes over.

California (55 electoral votes) is the richest prize in the electoral picnic basket and it will vote Democratic, whatever Trump’s fevered dreams may say to the contrary. The HuffPost Pollster chart shows a clear separation, with a large no-color gap, and not a hint of Mauve anywhere. Trump is already done here (Holy Cow!! losing by 22%). Spending time campaigning in California, except to raise money, is a pure waste of limited resources. In the earthy New York vernacular, he might as well go piss up a rope.

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On the flip side, in Kansas (6 electoral votes), Trump has a free shot. A good sized no-color gap, and no confidence interval mixing. An absence of Mauve. Trump will win in a walk (current lead 9%). Clinton has no realistic shot. No blue miracle is in the offing here. This is one reason, for good or ill, why Kansas is flyover country for retail Presidential politicking. Airport stops with candidates on board will be scarce indeed this fall.

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Texas (38 electoral votes) is the bastion for Republicans. It is huge in land area and rich in votes. Trump has led in polling over Clinton all the way since October 2015. And yet.

There are fairly wide confidence interval color bands, which indicate a greater amount of uncertainty. This situation is usually due to a combination of relatively few polls reported, or small sample sizes in the polls conducted. HuffPost reports only four polls of all stripes in Texas since June 2016. Most likely this is because the final outcome is considered by those who fund polls as a foregone conclusion (Trump wins Texas).

There is no Mauve overlap to encourage Democrats, but not much no-color gap for a safety margin. Trump will win (current lead at 5%) but not by typical historic margins. In 2012 loser Romney comfortably won Texas for the Republicans by 16 points, 57% to 41%. Trump’s performance in deep red Texas in 2016 so far is anemic, and deeply unimpressive.

The Mauve Index 526 Polling Code

The new 2016 13 Battleground Swing States, as of early September 2016, can be grouped in three categories: Five with major Mauve polling overlap (Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, Arizona, and Georgia); two with modest Mauve exhibition (Florida and North Carolina), and six with no Mauve at all (Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin).

Major Mauve Polling Subset

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Major Mauve coloration means the states are in serious play, and could be won by either party. Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada went Democratic in 2012, while Arizona and Georgia were solidly Republican. That two of the minority collection of 2012 Republican states have now been converted to swingy propositions is not good news for Trump’s campaign strategy.

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Trump leads by a point or two in each of the prior Republican winners, but the Mauve wave covers the entire range between the best estimates of support for each party. In other words, the polls says as of today the races are statistically tied.

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We could use a musical break right about now. Let’s celebrate that peach of a state, Georgia. Ray Charles and his classic “Georgia on My Mind, and the 1973 iconic R&B ballad from Gladys Knight and the Pips “Midnight Train to Georgia.****

Listen and enjoy at your leisure.

By contrast, Clinton leads in Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada also by a point of two, but the Mauve wave covers the full range between the best estimates. Again the polls say the candidates are tied today. Nothing substantial to choose between them.

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The bottom line for the Five-Segment category of stinginess is that there are five states tied, but two of them voted Republican in 2012, which is discouraging news for anyone wishing for a strong Trump performance.

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Somewhat Mauve Polling Subset

Somewhat Mauve coloration means one candidate has something of a lead (the race leans) but the outcome is still competitive. Two states fill this bill (Florida and North Carolina).

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In both, the Democrats lead in 2016 polling, The leads are not prohibitive by any means (2-3%), but they have been steady for more than a year (since September 2015) in both states. Worse, there is almost no Mauve to be counted. You need 20/20 vision, or a good magnifying glass for aging eyes to capture it.

huffpost-pollster-north-carolina-0916-pdf

Worst of all, North Carolina is the only original 2012 Republican swing state on the board, so the current state of affairs is another party setback, coupled with the new state of play for Arizona and Georgia. This is no two-steps forward, one-step backward procedure. Trump has managed a perfect hat-trick score, three steps in reverse polling-wise, as of September 2016.

The ultimate election outcome in these two important states will likely depend heavily on state based advertising, ground game, and local get out the vote campaign infrastructure. Sadly, by all three measures, Trump’s statewide efforts in both are well behind those of the Democrats, and not gaining serious traction so far.

Altogether a discouraging picture in the somewhat Mauve category of two states, but the game is not entirely lost yet, based on current polling.

No-Mauve Polling Subset

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The largest of the three Mauve related polling categories is the No Mauve grouping, with six states (Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin).

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Here there is essentially no good news for Republicans. All six were won by the Democrats in 2012. Clinton leads Trump in all six today. There is no mauve overlap in any to indicate a competitive race in November. All six have some no-color gap as a safety margin.

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Trump held a heavily mauve laced lead in a single poll conducted in Colorado before December 2015. He has never led again in any polling in the state, since active polling began in June 2016. Trump never led in any of the other five states after September 2015, so he has been under water for more than a year in each of these five. Current Democratic leads run from 5-8 points in each of the six states.

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These six swing states are not definitively out of reach just yet, but they would be a very hard climb indeed.

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Mauve Summation

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Our color coded polling review of the 13 Battleground States in 2016 shows there are five near ties (two with slim Republican leads in states solidly red in 2012), two which lean Democratic, and six likely Democratic contests.

The bad news is that of the 11 swing states in 2012, in the 2016 edition there are three ties (none with slim Republican leads), two lean Democratic (including North Carolina, which was the only red swinger in 20012), and six likely Democratic victories.

Trump has a daunting task of having to reverse at least 64 swing state electoral votes, if he is to prevail in November. As of today, he is losing 15 (North Carolina) electoral votes from loser Romney’s insufficient 206 total in 2012. Trump is quite competitive, though slightly behind, in Ohio (18), Iowa (6), and Nevada (6). If things remain the same for the next 60 days, Trump would then potentially net 15 electoral votes to improve Romney’s total to 221 for 2016. He would then become an election loser himself at a score of 317-221.

Even if he were to vastly step up his game in Florida and swamp the polls with organized GOTV volunteers, and flip Florida’s 29 electoral votes, he still doesn’t win a Chicken Dinner, falling short at 288-250. If he managed to also somehow retain North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes, the final tally would be Clinton over Trump, 273-265. Another losing proposition.

Folks, it just doesn’t look good, even applying the rosiest possible scenarios, based on the best polling data available in early September 2016.

Don’t worry. You won’t hear that sort of loser talk from inspirational leader Trump. It’s just as it should be. Everything is going just the way he predicted, and it will all turn out great. Trust him.

What do those pointy headed bean counter numbers guys know, anyway? None of them have any real money or success to rely on, you can count on that, for a fact.

Final Note

A similar sort of analysis could be done for the RealClearPolitics polling collection, as well as the HuffPost Pollster numbers. Let me say again what a tremendous public service both organizations are performing by making their collected data freely available to the public It is a signal service to our democracy, and we are all better off for their public spirited efforts.

I encourage each of you to visit their websites frequently and follow the results there in as much detail as your time allows.

In the meanwhile, the Mauve Index interpretation of the HuffPost Pollster state by state charts for the critical 13 battlegrounds in 2016, can serve as a fast and simple visual way to keep up in real time with just a few minutes work each day.

Mauve is an Information King. Thanks to William Henry Perkin, our enterprising 19th century English cousin.

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The 2016 Presidential election is the biggest, baddest high stakes free game in town. Trump himself has risked $50 million of his taxpayer fueled real estate profits to corner the Republican market and become their dice thrower. Players on both sides have collectively risked more than a billion dollars in the main pot, the most in history. The winners will influence or control hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds over the next four years. Trump has some truly great ideas about which businesses should profit from this golden pot.

You get to play along for real paying just the small price of registering to vote. You can bet for or against the House, and you stand to benefit. There are no other admission fees, club dues, or cover charges to stop you from participating. If you don’t vote, you will have helped deliver whatever political consequences you don’t approve of.

Trump has bet $50 million on his brand (himself) to get this far. Do you really think he is doing tall his primarily out of generous public spirited concern for the downtrodden and those currently left behind in America? Please stop laughing now.

Your vote counts. It is your privilege and your responsibility in order to safeguard your freedoms.

Vote November 8th. For your children and grandchildren, if not yourself.



*From the Wikipedia entry for Mauve:

Mauve is a pale purple color named after the mallow flower (French: mauve). The first use of the word mauve as a color was in 1796–98 according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but its use seems to have been rare before 1859. Another name for the color is mallow, with the first recorded use of mallow as a color name in English in 1611.

Mauve contains more grey and more blue than a pale tint of magenta. Many pale wildflowers called “blue” are actually mauve. Mauve is also sometimes described as pale violet.

The synthetic dye mauve was first so named in 1859. Chemist William Henry Perkin, then eighteen, was attempting to create artificial quinine in 1856. An unexpected residue caught his eye, which turned out to be the first aniline dye – specifically, Perkin’s mauve or mauveine, sometimes called aniline purple, but this new dye was originally called Tyrian Purple and was only called mauve after it was marketed in 1859. Earlier references to a mauve dye in 1856–58 referred to a color produced using the semi-synthetic dye murexide or a mixture of natural dyes. Perkin was so successful in marketing his discovery to the dye industry that his biography by Simon Garfield is simply entitled Mauve. However, as it faded easily, the success of mauve dye was short-lived and it was replaced by other synthetic dyes by 1873. As the memory of the original dye soon receded, the contemporary understanding of mauve is as a lighter, less-saturated color than it was originally known.

The 1890s are sometimes referred to in retrospect as the “Mauve Decade”, because of the characteristic popularity of the subtle color among progressive “artistic” types, both in Europe and the US.

Mauve is a commonly used color in stage lighting to represent sunsets.

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Mauve Musquee, the Namesake Flower

About 10 or 12 years ago, I ran across a delightful scientific biography of Sir William Perkin written by Simon Garfield. It is a great story and well worth the read.

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From Amazon.com:

 

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (May 17, 2002)

by Simon Garfield

“Garfield’s engaging story of William Perkin’s accidental discovery is an informative mix of science, history, and biography.”―(Boston Herald)

In 1856 eighteen-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce color. In a “witty, erudite, and entertaining” (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry research. Occasionally honored in certain colleges and chemistry clubs, Perkin until now has been a forgotten man.

In 1856, while trying to synthesize artificial quinine, 18-year-old chemistry student William Perkin instead produced a murky residue. Fifty years later, he described the event: he “was about to throw a certain residue away when I thought it might be interesting. The solution of it resulted in a strangely beautiful color.” Perkin had stumbled across the world’s first aniline dye, a color that became known as mauve.

“So what?” you might say. “A teenager invented a new color.” As Simon Garfield admirably points out in Mauve, the color really did change the world. Before Perkin’s discovery all the dyes and paints were colored by roots, leaves, insects, or, in the case of purple, mollusks. As a result, colors were inconsistent and unpredictably strong, often fading or washing out. Perkin found a dye that would always produce a uniform shade–and he pointed the way to other synthetic colors, thus revolutionizing the world of both dyemaking and fashion. Mauve became all the rage. Queen Victoria wore it to her daughter’s wedding in 1858, and the highly influential Empress Eugénie decided the color matched her eyes. Soon, the streets of London erupted in what one wag called the “mauve measles.”

Mauve had a much wider impact as well. By finding a commercial use for his discovery–much to the dismay of his teacher, the great August Hofmann, who believed there needed to be a separation between “pure” and “applied” science–Perkin inspired others to follow in his footsteps: “Ten years after Perkin’s discovery of mauve, organic chemistry was perceived as being exciting, profitable, and of great practical use.” The influx of bright young men all hoping to earn their fortunes through industrial applications of chemistry later brought significant advances in the fields of medicine, perfume, photography, and even explosives. Through it all, Garfield tells his story in clever, witty prose, turning this odd little tale into a very entertaining read. –(Sunny Delaney)

From Library Journal

Since his discovery of the first synthetic dye in 1856, interest in William Perkin has undergone a resurgence approximately every 50 years. Garfield’s (The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS) biography follows in the footsteps of A Jubilee Proceedings (1906) and a centenary supplement to the organic chemistry journal Tetrahedron (1956). It focuses on Perkin as a pioneer, taking research from the burgeoning field of academic chemistry and applying it to industry. The creation of a popular dye from coal-tar (a plentiful industrial waste) when the field of dyeing was beholden to natural dyes, such as indigo and madder, made Perkin very rich and fleetingly famous. The book also chronicles the influence of this discovery throughout the industry and into other fields. That the use of stains and dyes eventually transformed biochemistry and medicine is ironic, given that Perkin was originally seeking a cure for malaria when he stumbled onto the mauve dye. Recommended for science collections in academic and large public libraries. (Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib. )

Originally I was skeptical of a book about the origin of a color, but Mauve is so much more. It is the story of the creation of artificial colors, the industries that spawned from it, as well as birth of chemistry as a innovating science in the 19th century. The discoveries by William Perkins opened up what would be literally thousands of new colors over the years, as well as essential components of the perfume industry, flavorings industry and even the bleaching industry. Inspirational also because so much of this arose from literally castoff garbage – coal tar. In essence Perkins began a new wave of recycling. The heart of the story is less the discovery itself, but the ripples it set off that continue to today, leading to the “better living through chemistry.” Yet it also spotlights one of the lamentably forgotten pioneers in science who through a combination of curiosity, determination, foresight and luck found value in others castoff. Though it is classified as a biography, it is more of a sweeping view of history – the actual materials on Perkin’s life pre and post mauve are almost incidental to what was discovered. Garfield helps shed light on the color revolution and spotlights something that we today often take for granted. It was nice to walk away from a book and realized that I really learned something.

Perkin’s discovery is a prominent example of a fortuitous accident in science history, like Fleming and penicillin, or Roentgen and x-rays. These stories light up aspects of the scientific enterprise, which also encompasses countless hours of dogged and persistent experimental work that ends in failure or goes unrewarded.

See Pamela Cyran and Chris Gaylord, “The 20 most fascinating accidental inventions” (2012):

Chemist William Perkin wanted to cure malaria. Instead, he started a new movement in the fashion industry.

In 1856, Perkin was an 18-year-old student at the Royal College of London. He attempted to create artificial quinine, an anti-malaria drug derived from tree bark. He was unsuccessful. However, his curiosity spiked when his failures resulted in a thick, purple sludge.

The color caught his eye. The sludge, made with a carbon-rich tar from distilled coal, took on a unique shade of purple, a very popular color in the fashion world at the time. Perkin was able to isolate the compound producing the color, which he named “mauve.” Perkin had created the first-ever synthetic dye.

Perkin dropped out of school and his father, George, used his entire life savings to build a factory that produced mauve-colored items. Within a few years, the family became extremely wealthy.

Perkin’s dye was quite vibrant and didn’t fade or wash out, but that’s not the only good thing that came from Perkin’s new color. Mauve helped kick-start a chemistry revolution. Experiments from other labs soon resulted in thousands of useful carbon compounds, such as an actual artificial quinine.

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From the Royal Society of Chemistry website, “A brief history of mauve”:

Until the 1850s, cloth was dyed using plant materials. There was a huge industry related to this, involving growing the plants, importing plant materials, extracting the dye and dying the cloth. The dyes were not marvelous – the colours were quite dull and often faded in light and with repeated washing.

In 1856, aged 18, William Perkin was carrying out experiments aiming to make quinine, a cure for malaria. Malaria was raging through Europe and in parts of the UK. Finding a cure would have made the inventor very rich. Instead, Perkin accidentally made a bright purple substance that dyed silk permanently. He patented the process and persuaded his father to invest the family savings in setting up a dye factory in Greenford, West London. Some French chemists had also made a purple dye at about the same time, but using a different process. Luckily for Perkin, Empress Eugenie, the wife of Emperor Napoleon III of France, who was a beautiful, fabulous fashion icon, decided purple matched the colour of her eyes, so had dresses made in purple silk. Within five years, Perkin had earned a fortune, as purple became the most fashionable colour in Victorian Britain. The discovery revolutionised the dyeing industry forever.

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From the Wikipedia entry for Sir William Perkin, F.R.S.:

Sir William Henry Perkin, FRS (12 March 1838 – 14 July 1907) was an English chemist best known for his accidental discovery, at the age of 18, of the first aniline dye, mauveine. In trying to synthesise quinine, the treatment for malaria, Henry failed; but succeeded in the field of dyes.

William Perkin was born in the East End of London, the youngest of the seven children of George Perkin, a successful carpenter. His mother, Sarah, was of Scottish descent but moved to east London as a child. He was baptised in the parish church of St Paul’s, Shadwell, which had been connected to such luminaries as James Cook, Jane Randolph Jefferson (mother of Thomas Jefferson) and John Wesley.

At the age of 14, Perkin attended the City of London School, where he was taught by Thomas Hall, who fostered his scientific talent and encouraged him to pursue a career in chemistry.

In 1853, at the precocious age of 15, Perkin entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London (now part of Imperial College London), where he began his studies under August Wilhelm von Hofmann. At this time, chemistry was still in a quite primitive state: although the atomic theory was accepted, the major elements had been discovered, and techniques to analyse the proportions of the elements in many compounds were in place, it was still a difficult proposition to determine the arrangement of the elements in compounds. Hofmann had published a hypothesis on how it might be possible to synthesise quinine, an expensive natural substance much in demand for the treatment of malaria. Perkin, who had by then become one of Hofmann’s assistants, embarked on a series of experiments to try to achieve this end. During the Easter vacation in 1856, while Hofmann was visiting his native East End, Perkin performed some further experiments in the crude laboratory in his apartment on the top floor of his home in Cable Street in east London. It was here that he made his great accidental discovery: that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple colour. Perkin, who had an interest in painting and photography, immediately became enthusiastic about this result and carried out further trials with his friend Arthur Church and his brother Thomas. Since these experiments were not part of the work on quinine which had been assigned to Perkin, the trio carried them out in a hut in Perkin’s garden, so as to keep them secret from Hofmann.

They satisfied themselves that they might be able to scale up production of the purple substance and commercialise it as a dye, which they called mauveine. Their initial experiments indicated that it dyed silk in a way which was stable when washed or exposed to light. They sent some samples to a dye works in Perth, Scotland, and received a very promising reply from the general manager of the company, Robert Pullar. Perkin filed for a patent in August 1856, when he was still only 18. At the time, all dyes used for colouring cloth were natural substances, many of which were expensive and labour-intensive to extract. Furthermore, many lacked stability, or fastness. The colour purple, which had been a mark of aristocracy and prestige since ancient times, was especially expensive and difficult to produce — the dye used, known as Tyrian purple, was made from the glandular mucus of certain molluscs. Its extraction was variable and complicated, and so Perkin and his brother realised that they had discovered a possible substitute whose production could be commercially successful.

Perkin could not have chosen a better time or place for his discovery: England was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, largely driven by advances in the production of textiles; the science of chemistry had advanced to the point where it could have a major impact on industrial processes; and coal tar, the major source of his raw material, was an abundant by-product of the process for making coal gas and coke.

Having invented the dye, Perkin was still faced with the problems of raising the capital for producing it, manufacturing it cheaply, adapting it for use in dyeing cotton, gaining acceptance for it among commercial dyers, and creating public demand for it. However, he was active in all of these areas: he persuaded his father to put up the capital, and his brothers to partner him in the creation of a factory; he invented a mordant for cotton; he gave technical advice to the dyeing industry; and he publicised his invention of the dye. Public demand was increased when a similar colour was adopted by Queen Victoria in England and by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, in France, and when the crinoline or hooped-skirt, whose manufacture used a large quantity of cloth, became fashionable. Everything seemed to fall into place by dint of hard work, with a little luck, too. Perkin became rich.

After the discovery of mauveine, many new aniline dyes appeared (some discovered by Perkin himself), and factories producing them were constructed across Europe.

William Perkin continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his life: he discovered and marketed other synthetic dyes, including Britannia Violet and Perkin’s Green; he discovered ways to make coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfume raw materials, and cinnamic acid. (The reaction used to make the latter became known as the Perkin reaction.) Local lore has it that the colour of the nearby Grand Union Canal changed from week to week depending on the activity at Perkin’s Greenford dyeworks. In 1869, Perkin found a method for the commercial production from anthracene of the brilliant red dye alizarin, which had been isolated and identified from madder root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet, simultaneously with purpurin, another red dye of lesser industrial interest, but the German chemical company BASF patented the same process one day before he did. During the next decade, the new German Empire was rapidly eclipsing Britain as the centre of Europe’s chemical industry. By the 1890s, Germany had a near-monopoly on the business and Perkin was compelled to sell off his holdings and retire.

Perkin received many honours in his lifetime. In June 1866, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1879, received their Royal Medal and, in 1889, their Davy Medal. He was knighted in 1906, and in the same year was awarded the first Perkin Medal, established to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his discovery of mauveine. Today, the Perkin Medal is widely acknowledged as the highest honour in American industrial chemistry and has been awarded annually by the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry to many inspiring and gifted chemists.

** On the political scale, the parent organizations of the two poll aggregators, the Huffington Post and RealClearPolitics, would generally be considered to the left and right ends of the spectrum, but not rapidly so. Using the popular left brain-right brain dominance dichotomy, however, on the data presentation spectrum they would be considered just the reverse. HuffPost Pollster uses a right brain approach with colors and images, and RealClearPolitics Poll Tracker uses the left brain logic and analytic mode, a la spreadsheet method.

Go figure.

right-brain-left-brain-diagram

On the other hand, one popular psychological theory has seen its influence fade:

According to the left-brain, right-brain dominance theory, the right side of the brain is best at expressive and creative tasks. The left-side of the brain is considered to be adept at tasks that involve logic, language, and analytical thinking.

Researchers have demonstrated that right-brain/left-brain theory is a myth, yet its popularity persists. Why? Unfortunately, many people are likely unaware that the theory is outdated.

Today, students might continue to learn about the theory as a point of historical interest – to understand how our ideas about how the brain works have evolved and changed over time as researchers have learned more about how the brain operates.

While over-generalized and overstated by popular psychology and self-help texts, understanding your strengths and weaknesses in certain areas can help you develop better ways to learn and study. For example, students who have a difficult time following verbal instructions (often cited as a right-brain characteristic) might benefit from writing down directions and developing better organizational skills. The important thing to remember if you take one of the many left brain/right brain quizzes that you will likely encounter online is that they are entirely for fun and you shouldn’t place much stock in your results.

craola-flip-top-48-crayon-box-1949

***As I was drawn to consider the mauve and the color spectrum, I was involuntarily transported to my first childhood memories of a color palette. That’s right the ubiquitous paperboard box of Crayola crayons.

One of my proudest possessions as a 3rd grade student in 1957 was my very own box of 48 Crayolas to use at school, that I didn’t have to share with my younger sister. In general she was ok, I guess, but since she two years younger, and the crayons were somewhat fragile, she tended to break stuff while coloring when she got excited, leaving stub ends. Full replacements were hard to come by.

I needed help to recall the names of all the colors in my trusty 48 Crayola box. Mauve was not one of them. Neither was Mauve (labeled as such) in the Fabulous 64 crayon collection (1958). However, see the chart below for pale shades of purple that are mauve or mauve-like through the years in the Crayola collections. In the 48 crayon box I used, lavender and rose pink come close. In the 64 collection red violet, periwinkle, and orchid fit the bill. Even Crayola has recognized shades of mauve.

crayola-crayons-purple-range-of-colors

I found a fantastically detailed website for all things Crayola here.

Among other things, there is a 42-part Definitive History of the Colors of Crayola (through 2015).

This is a fine work of love and obsession, and a marvelous research resource.

From Part 13: The Revolutionary No. 64:

Crayola began working on another major shift in their products and colors starting in 1955 after they had to address everything with their new incorporation.  The first things addressed were new wrapper and box assortment designs.  They had a new logo too.  After that came more fundamental color changes and the introduction of the new No. 64 assortment box; their new dazzling flagship assortment designed to catapult them into the new era with their usual stamp of dominance in the marketplace.

crayola-fabulous-64

When Crayola introduced their largest box of crayons up to that, the No 64 box, in April of 1958 on the Captain Kangaroo children’s TV show, they clearly had a winning package on their hands.  They took their newly classic 1949 No 48 box with the flip-back lid design and expanded that into the wider box we are still using today.  In addition, they created a first among crayon boxes: the built in sharpener in the back.  It was an ingeniously simple idea that they quickly patented.  It was through this patent that we can begin to put together the earliest sequence of boxes too.  Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions is what the original box looked like.  The one used to replicate for the 40th anniversary of the product (a Canadian event, not in USA) back in 1998 was actually the second major design of the box and the third true redesign.

Long live Crayola crayons, and the spirit of kids who express themselves in color on paper.

One final personal serendipity. When I was in college in the late 1960’s, there were only two or three places in the US where an undergraduate could seriously pursue History of Science as an academic major. I was lucky enough to attend one of them, and it became my major field of study. I never regretted that choice.

Later in life, I worked as a Public Health professional. Naturally, the adverse and pervasive health consequences of smoking were a major professional focus for virtually my entire career, across clinical, research, public policy, and legal areas. After nearly 40 years of study, perhaps foolishly, I did not expect to see any new tobacco surprises.

In reading about Crayola’s revolutionary 64, I just found dots struggling to connect about packaging. The iconic flip-top 48 crayon box with stadium seating, beloved by millions of America’s kids, was introduced in 1949. In 1955 cigarette giant Philip Morris introduced the iconic hard pack flip-top cigarette pack (a la Marlboro) to tens of millions of America’s smokers.

Did America’s cigarette makers copy the kid friendly (easy open) box design for their product? I don’t know, can’t say right now.

Just a coincidence? Maybe so. But Public Health coincidences like this give me a creepy and uncomfortable feeling. Cigarette manufacturers are a very talented and sophisticated lot, and very little of commercial advantage, in any field, ever gets past them.

If these packaging breakthroughs were connected, that would not be a happy accident.

****From the Wikipedia entry for “Midnight Train to Georgia”:

“Midnight Train to Georgia” is a 1973 number-one hit single by Gladys Knight & the Pips, their second release after departing Motown Records for Buddah Records. Written by Jim Weatherly, and included on the Pips’ 1973 LP Imagination, “Midnight Train to Georgia” won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus and has become Knight’s signature song.

The theme of the song is how romantic love can conquer differences in background. The boyfriend of the song’s narrator is a failed musician who left his native Georgia to move to Los Angeles to become a “superstar, but he didn’t get far”. He decides to give up, and “go back to the life he once knew.”

The song was originally written and performed by Jim Weatherly under the title “Midnight Plane to Houston,” which he recorded on Jimmy Bowen’s Amos Records. “It was based on a conversation I had with somebody… about taking a midnight plane to Houston,” Weatherly recalls. “I wrote it as a kind of a country song. Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta and he wanted to cut it with Cissy Houston… he asked if I minded if he changed the title to ‘Midnight Train to Georgia.’ And I said, ‘I don’t mind. Just don’t change the rest of the song.'” Weatherly, in an interview with Gary James, stated that the phone conversation was with Farrah Fawcett and he used Fawcett and his friend Lee Majors, whom she had just started dating, “as kind of like characters.”

“Midnight Train To Georgia” (partial lyrics)

L.A. proved too much for the man

(Too much for the man, he couldn’t make it)

So he’s leaving a life he’s come to know, ooh

(He said he’s going)

He said he’s going back to find

(Going back to find)

Ooh, what’s left of his world

The world he left behind not so long ago

 

He’s leaving

(Leaving)

On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah

(Leaving on the midnight train)

Said he’s going back

(Going back to find)

To a simpler place and time, oh yes he is

 

He kept dreaming

(Dreaming)

Ooh, that some day he’d be a star

(A superstar, but he didn’t get far)

But he sure found out the hard way

That dreams don’t always come true, oh no, uh uh

(Dreams don’t always come true, uh uh, no, uh uh)

So he pawned down his hopes

(Woo, woo, woo-woo)

And even sold his old car

(Woo, woo, woo-woo)

Bought a one way ticket back to the life he once knew

So a beloved 1973 R&B classic about Georgia, inspired in part by Farah Fawcett’s time in Hollywood with Lee Majors with a geo change from Houston, provides a sub rosa message in 2016 to the ultimate superstar striver, one Donald Trump.

It doesn’t always work out. Is Georgia a harbinger?

Regardless, another message of the song over the span of 40 years is perfectly clear, Trump spending campaign time in California, instead of contested states like Georgia, is a flat out waste of time for Republican voters and donors

Can I get a witness?