Today we have an unlimited number of colors at our fingertips thanks to modern chemistry. But it was once very difficult to find, isolate, and use pigments for paints, dyes, and ceramic glazes. Each pigment has a story behind it, and some of those stories are pretty interesting.
Egyptian blue was the first synthetic pigment we know about, used as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE. It was made by baking quartz, copper, alkali, and lime at very high temperatures, but the formula was lost until it was reverse-engineered in the 19th century. Egyptian blue turns out to have unique properties that the Egyptians who made it had no concept of, but are now being used in communication technology.
The story of Egyptian blue and nine other historical pigments are told in an excerpt from the book The Universe in 100 Colors: Weird and Wondrous Colors from Science and Nature, just released today, at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Djehouty)
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