January 3, 2024 • 11 mins
The story of why blueprints were blue is more involved than you think. It involves a chemical process and the Prussian Army. Yeah you heard me right.
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. Dates here in spirit.
When you put us all together, you can call us
the blue Man group. Best they could come up with
on short notes.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, this is the I guess, the conclusion of our
two part series on colors. Although we have done colors
in the past. I know we did Indigo, and I
think we did a short stuff on Haint blue, right.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, and some other stuff. It's come up in some
other things, but I think colors is going to be
a never ending suite. There's a lot of colors to cover.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's right. And this is a story of not only
a color, but a process. And we're talking about the
color of Prussian blue. And that is the color of
a blueprint, like in the old days when blueprints were
really blue, like blueprints for a house or a building,
or a bridge or a tank or whatever you're going
to design. That blue is called Prussian blue.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. And I mean if you go and look up
blueprints up to about the fifties, I would say you
are going to find actual blue blueprints, like you said.
And there was a guy named John Herschel. He was
an English astronomer, chemist and photographer. And this is back
when photographer is really something. This is the eighteen forties.
(01:23):
In eighteen forty two, he figured out that Prussian blue
is photo reactive, meaning that when you expose it to
light you can get Prussian blue. And he figured out
that you could use that chemical reaction to make copies
of things. It's extraordinarily clever. And I think John Herschel
(01:44):
deserves to be in the Inventors Hall of Fame for this.
Is he not I don't know. If he is, he
deserves to be there. If not, he deserves to be there.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I agree. So this is the process. It's called cyanotype,
and it was what early photographers used. In fact, the
very first published photography book was made with cyanotype.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, that was, by the way, that was by Anna
Atkins who's eighteen forty three book Photographs of British Algae.
Get this, Chuck colon Cyana type impressions amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So all of a sudden, architects and engineers were all
over this stuff as well, because they realize, hey, if
you can make a photograph using this syanotype process, you
can make a copy of something. And we're really tired
of redrawing everything over and over right exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So the process involves producing blue ferric ferris cyanide. That's
the chemical name for Prussian blue. And you'll notice there's
a lot of feric stuff in there. That means it's
made from iron salt, but it also is cyanide in it.
And just from this researching this episode, Chuck, I finally
understood what cyan as a blue refers to. It's referring
(02:57):
to cyanide. Yeah, did you know that already? No, Well,
I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But if you take a drawing of something and you
can put it on something that's basically see through these days,
they use like clear plastic. If you're doing something like
this and you have a line drawing and you put
that line drawing on top of a paper that's been
treated in blue ferric fair cyanide and these iron salts
that make that, and you expose it to light, then
(03:26):
that the paper beneath that's treated in the Prussian blue
turns blue in every place except for where those lines
were on top of it.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, So it's like a photo image in a dark room.
And in fact, you have to do it in a
dark room, just like you would a photograph. So that's
why you know. They would draw it in regular ink
on paper, and then the reverse negative image of that
would be white drawing on blue paper and a really
nice looking blue.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, it's gorgeous blue. Pressure and blue is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah. Man, I was typing in Prussian blue things and
I saw some suit jackets, some wool suit jackets. Prussian blue. Gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, you'd look like a member of the Prussian army
from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's right, That's why they named it that, right.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah. Do you want to take a break and then
come back and talk about where Prussian blue came from?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your Chuck,
I want to learn a thing or two from josh
Am Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, job.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
So, Prussian blue finds its origins in the laboratory of
an alchemist and a die maker. Of all places, it's
a pretty cool place for a new thing to be created,
especially something as beautiful as pressure blue. And the alchemist
was a guy named Johann Conrad Dipple. How would you
say Conrad in German Chuck, Mmm, that's probably right. Conrad
(05:10):
or Conrad, I don't know. Actually, okay, well we'll just
call him mister Dipple. He was the alchemist hair dip
Air Dipple. Yeah, he was the alchemist, and the dye
maker was a guy named Diesbach. We're just going with
mister Disbach for this guy. And they shared this lab
in Berlin, and by sharing a lab and sharing one
(05:33):
another's or using like borrowing I should say, a cup
of one another's you know ingredients here there, they ended
up accidentally creating Prussian blue.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, exactly. I think the chemists was working on medicines
like elixers and things, and Diesbach, as a die maker,
was great at making these dyes. And as the story goes,
he was making a deep red dye one day when
he borrowed some potash from his chemist friend and that
(06:02):
turned it into this wonderful, wonderful Prussian blue. He went
back in hair Dipple and said, I got to figure
out what this stuff is. And he figured out the
secret was that the potash had ox blood and when
he mixed that with the iron sulfate that caused this
amazing blue to what does it do? Does it unveil itself.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great way to put it.
So Prussian blue has unveiled itself. And at first they
called it Berlin blue, and it only became known as
Prussian blue later on because it was used to dye
the uniforms of the Prussian army in the early nineteenth century,
and depending on what part of the continent you were on,
(06:44):
or whether you were on the continent at all, calling
it Prussian blue was either a term of endearment or
a term of disparagement because the Prussians helped save the
British as cookies at Waterloo and defeated Napoleon. So if
you were French, you didn't think very highly of the
Prussians or they're blue. If you were English, it was
a term of endearment because you were really grateful to
(07:05):
the Prussians for coming in saving the day.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
There, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And it became a just a popular color. Like artists
loved using it, print makers loved using it. Obviously, these
architects loved the result of using it. I'm not sure
if they especially loved the color. That was just kind
of what color blueprints turned out to be, right, But
I'm sure, they were fine with it, but Herschel died
(07:29):
before that blue printing process was born. I think five
years later is when the actual architectural blueprint process that
is unfortunately gone, because I think it looks really neat
these days. You're not going to find that because over
the years a lot of different things happened to either
make it fall out of fashion or just make it
(07:51):
cheaper and safer and easier to make copies in different ways.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I would bet that there's some hipster artisan architectural firm
that still uses this process now you think has gone
back to it, Yeah, but the reason that has largely
been abandon is because it's a very labor intensive, time
intensive process, even if you're using kind of updated machinery,
(08:15):
and other processes came along that seem to do a
better job. And plus also I don't know if everybody's like,
we're sick of the blue or whatever, because there's another
process called diazo white press, and it does the same thing,
but it gives you like black or gray lines on
a white background, and that's kind of what the what
the architectural plants look like today. They don't look blue anymore.
(08:39):
And then shortly After that, they came up with zerographic copiers,
which you just today call it copier. And I didn't
realize this either, chuck. They're called zero graphic because this
is a dry process, like zero like dry, like zero scaping.
It's a dry process because you don't have to wet
the paper that is receiving the image like you do
(09:00):
when you're using the old Prussian blue cyanotype process.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, and I think that's how Xerox got their name, right.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, for sure, which is a proprietary eponym.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, And I thought I thought the diaso process created
blue lines. Is that not true?
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I think later on they figured out that if you
use blue lines on the original, it makes a cleaner
line on the copy. That's what that was my take
on it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
All right, And I think that was sort of like
in the seventies and then in the early two thousands
is when the d'azzo process started to kind of fade
away because you know, ammonia is not something you want
to be working with a lot, and there are also
regulations that increased in working with ammonia. And then you know,
the digital revolution came along print technology things that were
(09:51):
cheaper basically and smaller. All of a sudden, you didn't
have to have some huge like plot printer in your
office to make something like this, and it, you know,
it did, like everything, it became cheaper and smaller and faster.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and I think the printers that can print out
you know, like regulation size architectural planes or engineering plans,
those became more affordable too, And they're basically just xeroxes.
They're like printers essentially, just bigger size. The one thing
I did see, Chuck that I didn't realize pen plotters.
It's like a contraption originally where you have a pen
(10:27):
and connected to that pen is a bunch of other pens,
and so when you're drawing on one paper, the other
pins are drawing on their own paper. So you're making
copies like that as you're drawing in the first place.
Those have come back and they're now computerized.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, plotters are super cool. At a frien years ago
that was a sign maker and he would, you know,
these plotters would cut out these designs from the computer
files and it's just really cool to see those things.
You know, that automation at work, even for like a
small business. You know, he was like a team of one.
(11:00):
The other thing I wanted to mention too, is I
think the d'azza's faded in sunlight. Oh okay, which it
was fine for a little while because apparently it takes
you know, like a few months, which was enough if
you're you know, if it's like a house plan or something,
you don't need it to last forever. But eventually they
were like, you know, we should probably make something a
little more permanent.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
That connects the dots for me, because I saw on
some archivist website that they do not recommend using the
d'atzo print because it isn't it's so impermanent. Now I
have it, knowing's half the battle, as they say, Cyan Cian.
Chuck said, Cyan, I follow it up with a Scian too,
and everybody that means short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. Dates here in spirit.
When you put us all together, you can call us
the blue Man group. Best they could come up with
on short notes.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, this is the I guess, the conclusion of our
two part series on colors. Although we have done colors
in the past. I know we did Indigo, and I
think we did a short stuff on Haint blue, right.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, and some other stuff. It's come up in some
other things, but I think colors is going to be
a never ending suite. There's a lot of colors to cover.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's right. And this is a story of not only
a color, but a process. And we're talking about the
color of Prussian blue. And that is the color of
a blueprint, like in the old days when blueprints were
really blue, like blueprints for a house or a building,
or a bridge or a tank or whatever you're going
to design. That blue is called Prussian blue.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. And I mean if you go and look up
blueprints up to about the fifties, I would say you
are going to find actual blue blueprints, like you said.
And there was a guy named John Herschel. He was
an English astronomer, chemist and photographer. And this is back
when photographer is really something. This is the eighteen forties.
(01:23):
In eighteen forty two, he figured out that Prussian blue
is photo reactive, meaning that when you expose it to
light you can get Prussian blue. And he figured out
that you could use that chemical reaction to make copies
of things. It's extraordinarily clever. And I think John Herschel
(01:44):
deserves to be in the Inventors Hall of Fame for this.
Is he not I don't know. If he is, he
deserves to be there. If not, he deserves to be there.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I agree. So this is the process. It's called cyanotype,
and it was what early photographers used. In fact, the
very first published photography book was made with cyanotype.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, that was, by the way, that was by Anna
Atkins who's eighteen forty three book Photographs of British Algae.
Get this, Chuck colon Cyana type impressions amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So all of a sudden, architects and engineers were all
over this stuff as well, because they realize, hey, if
you can make a photograph using this syanotype process, you
can make a copy of something. And we're really tired
of redrawing everything over and over right exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So the process involves producing blue ferric ferris cyanide. That's
the chemical name for Prussian blue. And you'll notice there's
a lot of feric stuff in there. That means it's
made from iron salt, but it also is cyanide in it.
And just from this researching this episode, Chuck, I finally
understood what cyan as a blue refers to. It's referring
(02:57):
to cyanide. Yeah, did you know that already? No, Well,
I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But if you take a drawing of something and you
can put it on something that's basically see through these days,
they use like clear plastic. If you're doing something like
this and you have a line drawing and you put
that line drawing on top of a paper that's been
treated in blue ferric fair cyanide and these iron salts
that make that, and you expose it to light, then
(03:26):
that the paper beneath that's treated in the Prussian blue
turns blue in every place except for where those lines
were on top of it.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, So it's like a photo image in a dark room.
And in fact, you have to do it in a
dark room, just like you would a photograph. So that's
why you know. They would draw it in regular ink
on paper, and then the reverse negative image of that
would be white drawing on blue paper and a really
nice looking blue.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, it's gorgeous blue. Pressure and blue is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah. Man, I was typing in Prussian blue things and
I saw some suit jackets, some wool suit jackets. Prussian blue. Gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, you'd look like a member of the Prussian army
from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's right, That's why they named it that, right.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah. Do you want to take a break and then
come back and talk about where Prussian blue came from?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your Chuck,
I want to learn a thing or two from josh
Am Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, job.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
So, Prussian blue finds its origins in the laboratory of
an alchemist and a die maker. Of all places, it's
a pretty cool place for a new thing to be created,
especially something as beautiful as pressure blue. And the alchemist
was a guy named Johann Conrad Dipple. How would you
say Conrad in German Chuck, Mmm, that's probably right. Conrad
(05:10):
or Conrad, I don't know. Actually, okay, well we'll just
call him mister Dipple. He was the alchemist hair dip
Air Dipple. Yeah, he was the alchemist, and the dye
maker was a guy named Diesbach. We're just going with
mister Disbach for this guy. And they shared this lab
in Berlin, and by sharing a lab and sharing one
(05:33):
another's or using like borrowing I should say, a cup
of one another's you know ingredients here there, they ended
up accidentally creating Prussian blue.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, exactly. I think the chemists was working on medicines
like elixers and things, and Diesbach, as a die maker,
was great at making these dyes. And as the story goes,
he was making a deep red dye one day when
he borrowed some potash from his chemist friend and that
(06:02):
turned it into this wonderful, wonderful Prussian blue. He went
back in hair Dipple and said, I got to figure
out what this stuff is. And he figured out the
secret was that the potash had ox blood and when
he mixed that with the iron sulfate that caused this
amazing blue to what does it do? Does it unveil itself.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great way to put it.
So Prussian blue has unveiled itself. And at first they
called it Berlin blue, and it only became known as
Prussian blue later on because it was used to dye
the uniforms of the Prussian army in the early nineteenth century,
and depending on what part of the continent you were on,
(06:44):
or whether you were on the continent at all, calling
it Prussian blue was either a term of endearment or
a term of disparagement because the Prussians helped save the
British as cookies at Waterloo and defeated Napoleon. So if
you were French, you didn't think very highly of the
Prussians or they're blue. If you were English, it was
a term of endearment because you were really grateful to
(07:05):
the Prussians for coming in saving the day.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
There, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And it became a just a popular color. Like artists
loved using it, print makers loved using it. Obviously, these
architects loved the result of using it. I'm not sure
if they especially loved the color. That was just kind
of what color blueprints turned out to be, right, But
I'm sure, they were fine with it, but Herschel died
(07:29):
before that blue printing process was born. I think five
years later is when the actual architectural blueprint process that
is unfortunately gone, because I think it looks really neat
these days. You're not going to find that because over
the years a lot of different things happened to either
make it fall out of fashion or just make it
(07:51):
cheaper and safer and easier to make copies in different ways.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I would bet that there's some hipster artisan architectural firm
that still uses this process now you think has gone
back to it, Yeah, but the reason that has largely
been abandon is because it's a very labor intensive, time
intensive process, even if you're using kind of updated machinery,
(08:15):
and other processes came along that seem to do a
better job. And plus also I don't know if everybody's like,
we're sick of the blue or whatever, because there's another
process called diazo white press, and it does the same thing,
but it gives you like black or gray lines on
a white background, and that's kind of what the what
the architectural plants look like today. They don't look blue anymore.
(08:39):
And then shortly After that, they came up with zerographic copiers,
which you just today call it copier. And I didn't
realize this either, chuck. They're called zero graphic because this
is a dry process, like zero like dry, like zero scaping.
It's a dry process because you don't have to wet
the paper that is receiving the image like you do
(09:00):
when you're using the old Prussian blue cyanotype process.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, and I think that's how Xerox got their name, right.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, for sure, which is a proprietary eponym.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, And I thought I thought the diaso process created
blue lines. Is that not true?
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I think later on they figured out that if you
use blue lines on the original, it makes a cleaner
line on the copy. That's what that was my take
on it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
All right, And I think that was sort of like
in the seventies and then in the early two thousands
is when the d'azzo process started to kind of fade
away because you know, ammonia is not something you want
to be working with a lot, and there are also
regulations that increased in working with ammonia. And then you know,
the digital revolution came along print technology things that were
(09:51):
cheaper basically and smaller. All of a sudden, you didn't
have to have some huge like plot printer in your
office to make something like this, and it, you know,
it did, like everything, it became cheaper and smaller and faster.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and I think the printers that can print out
you know, like regulation size architectural planes or engineering plans,
those became more affordable too, And they're basically just xeroxes.
They're like printers essentially, just bigger size. The one thing
I did see, Chuck that I didn't realize pen plotters.
It's like a contraption originally where you have a pen
(10:27):
and connected to that pen is a bunch of other pens,
and so when you're drawing on one paper, the other
pins are drawing on their own paper. So you're making
copies like that as you're drawing in the first place.
Those have come back and they're now computerized.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, plotters are super cool. At a frien years ago
that was a sign maker and he would, you know,
these plotters would cut out these designs from the computer
files and it's just really cool to see those things.
You know, that automation at work, even for like a
small business. You know, he was like a team of one.
(11:00):
The other thing I wanted to mention too, is I
think the d'azza's faded in sunlight. Oh okay, which it
was fine for a little while because apparently it takes
you know, like a few months, which was enough if
you're you know, if it's like a house plan or something,
you don't need it to last forever. But eventually they
were like, you know, we should probably make something a
little more permanent.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
That connects the dots for me, because I saw on
some archivist website that they do not recommend using the
d'atzo print because it isn't it's so impermanent. Now I
have it, knowing's half the battle, as they say, Cyan Cian.
Chuck said, Cyan, I follow it up with a Scian too,
and everybody that means short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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