The invention of blue and purple pigments in ancient times (2006) | Hacker News Reader

The invention of blue and purple pigments in ancient times (2006)

pubs.rsc.org

66 pointsperihelions19 comments

It's fascinating that just 3 years after article date this [1] gets discovered, which is a fantastic pigment with a slew of desirable properties. It's also fascinating that it was only discovered in 2009 :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue

It took eleven years from discovery to commercialization in paint, that seems like a long time.

I agree. Judging from the price, there is no shortage of demand.

Just seems like University admins (and everyone in between) got involved to hinder a deal between inventor and commercializing partner.

Wow, that's one pricey pigment: https://gamblinstore.com/yinmn-blue/

That's more like Williamsburg or Old Holland prices.

I wish I could buy the pure powder

Maybe Sigma has it

You can get it as powder from Kremer Pigments:

https://shop.kremerpigments.com/us/shop/pigments/45320-yinmn...

Non-toxic!

Apropos of nothing in particular, a sentence from Pliny's Natural History:

- "I myself have seen the fleece upon the living animal dyed purple, scarlet, and violet,—a pound and a half of dye being used for each,—just as though they had been produced by Nature in this form, to meet the demands of luxury."

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60230/pg60230-images.ht... (Book VIII, Chapter 74)

In the Hebrew bible, there's a commandment to put fringes on garments with corners and to put a blue thread in them:

דבר אל־בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם ועשו להם ציצת על־כנפי בגדיהם לדרתם ונתנו על־ציצת הכנף פתיל תכלת

(from "Numbers 15" in common termonology).

Because we don't know the dye that was used 3000 years ago, today most omit the blue thread, but some people claim that they know what it was (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/530127/jewish...) and wear fringes with blue.

(It's from a cuttlefish, the "chilazon")

Personally, I wear the blue thread, but I don't think we really know for sure what they used back then.

> Because we don't know the dye that was used 3000 years ago, today most omit the blue thread

Were I party to that contract, I (being aware of non-english distinctions) would wear any azure/голубой (sky, not ocean, blue), for:

a) a colour is specified, neither dye nor pigment. (pedantically, it need not even be a reflective colour, presumably something emissive, eg blue EL wire, would be equally acceptable)

b) 15:39 says the colour is meant for the eyes of the wearer, to remind them, so in this case the proper interpretation of "blue" is not even whatever that colour may have been 3'000 years ago, but whatever suggests "tekhelet" to the garment's wearer, today.

(in particular, a tritanope ought to be able to wear suitable grey threads)

Caveat: I have no hebrew, and english has lost its second person singular. Is the second person in the original singular or plural? In the latter case, (b) would need to be amended to match a community, not a personal, interpretation, and the tritanope should then be less free and more frum.

Edit: I think I see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/אתם#Hebrew in there, so it needs to be a community blue. Sucks to be a tritanope, but presumably english monoglots (who don't make the sky/ocean distinction in their basic colours; compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Color-term_hierarch... ) would be fine with any blue.

This argument is in keeping with tradition, well done!

I found a neat photograph [0] of the process of extracting Tyrian purple from Murex snails. There's a remarkable variety of blue pigments that separate out of that, alongside of the famous purple.

(Murex snails being a different hypothesis for the source of the forgotten tekheret dye, separate from the cuttlefish one).

[0] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/05/multimedia/05SCI-...

photo from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/science/archaeology-tyria... ("In Israel, a 3,000-Year-Old Purple Factory")

Oh interesting - is this in any way related to why the Israel flag went with blue?

Also, the two lines in the flag are tzitzit (cords) which are supposed to be blue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzit

Yep, that and a bunch of ancient Jewish texts mention using blue within religious contexts with spiritual meaning. It's come to be that blue has been considered by Jews as a color that is representative of the Jewish people

"Chilazon" is snail.

Favorite line:

"The sepiolite stems from commercially available cat litter."

Also reminds me of:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0526719/characters/nm0570570

What about the more recent invention of blue pigment LED? https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M?si=n5J64EBO_4xe5u0Q I found this story facing regarding the inventors determination

Related: http://uriel.cat-v.org/

And, well, I miss this guy even if I never met him.

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