"The 18th century sees an increase in scientific knowledge and practical research. Many findings have a direct impact on everyday life, craft and commerce. New technics allows, e.g., to create new colours. Find out here what Napoleon's Campaign in Egypt, the Prussians and an apothecary have to do with the various blue pigments created in the long 18th century.
Johann Jacob Diesbach was a paint manufacturer in Berlin / Prussia. Legend has it that he discovered a new shade of blue by accident.
Diesbach had been in the process of making a red colour from crushed cochineal insects, iron sulphate and potash. When one batch of the product did not turn red, but from pale pink to purple and finally to a deep blue, he contacted the supplier of the potash, a certain Johann Konrad Dippel, theologian, physician and alchemist…"
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Armand
paints a Napoleonic caricature.