Any artist who enjoys using Prussian blue will find it hard to imagine that such a beautiful blue was actually the result of an experiment gone wrong. The discoverer of Prussian blue, the colormaker Diesbach, was in fact not trying to make a blue, but a red. The creation of Prussian blue, the first modern, synthetic color was completely accidental.
Diesbach, working in Berlin, was attempting to create cochineal red lake in his laboratory.When Diesbach mixed the contaminated potash with the iron sulphate, instead of the strong red he was expecting, he got one that was very pale. He then attempted to concentrate it, but instead of a darker red he was expecting, he first got a purple, then a deep blue. He'd accidentally created the first synthetic blue pigment, Prussian blue.
