But in 1909
Friedlander put an end to the superstition by analyzing Tyrian purple
and finding that it was already known. It was the same as a dye that had
been prepared five years before by Sachs but had not come into
commercial use because of its inferiority to others in the market. It
required 12,000 of the mollusks to supply the little material needed for
analysis, but once the chemist had identified it he did not need to
bother the Murex further, for he could make it by the ton if he had
wanted to. The coloring principle turned out to be a di-brom indigo,
that is the same as the substance extracted from the Indian plant, but
with the addition of two atoms of bromine. Why a particular kind of a
shellfish should have got the habit of extracting this rare element from
sea water and stowing it away in this peculiar form is "one of those
things no fellow can find out." But according to the chemist the Murex
mollusk made a mistake in hitching the bromine to the wrong carbon
atoms. He finds as he would word it that the 6:6' di-brom indigo
secreted by the shellfish is not so good as the 5:5' di-brom indigo now
manufactured at a cheap rate and in unlimited quantity.
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