William Henry Perkin finds a method in 1869 for the commercial production from anthracene of the brilliant red dye alizarin, which had been isolated and identified from madder root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet, simultaneously with purpurin, another red dye of lesser industrial interest, but the German chemical company BASF patents the same process one day before he does.

Having invented the synthetic purple mauveine in 1856, Perkin had then been faced with the problems of raising the capital for producing it, manufacturing it cheaply, adapting it for use in dyeing cotton, gaining acceptance for it among commercial dyers, and creating public demand for it.

However, he had been active in all of these areas: he had persuaded his father to put up the capital, and his brothers to partner him in the creation of a factory; he has invented a mordant for cotton; he gives technical advice to the dyeing industry; and he had publicized his invention of the dye.

Public demand had been increased when a similar color was adopted by Queen Victoria in England and by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, in France, and when the crinoline or hooped-skirt, whose manufacture uses a large quantity of cloth, became fashionable.

Everything seemed to fall into place by dint of hard work, with a little luck, too.

Perkin has become rich.

After the discovery of mauveine, many new aniline dyes had appeared (some discovered by Perkin himself), and factories producing them have been constructed across Europe.

William Perkin will continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his life: he has discovered and marketed other synthetic dyes, including Britannia Violet and Perkin's Green; he has discovered ways to make coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfume raw materials, and cinnamic acid. (The reaction used to make the latter becomes known as the Perkin reaction.)

Local lore has it that the color of the nearby Grand Union Canal changed from week to week depending on the activity at Perkin's Greenford dyeworks.

Heinrich Caro develops a synthesis for alizarin (a natural pigment in madder), and applies for a British patent on June 25, 1869.

BASF had recruited Caro, a German chemist with experience of the dyestuffs industry in England.

Coincidentally, William Henery Perkin applies for a virtually identical patent on June 26, 1869, and the two companies come to a mutual commercial agreement about the process.

BASF, which stands for Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (English: Baden Aniline and Soda Factory), had been founded on April 6, 1865 in Mannheim, in the German-speaking country of Baden by Friedrich Engelhorn, who had been responsible for setting up a gasworks and street lighting for the town council in 1861.

The gasworks produces tar as a byproduct, and Engelhorn uses this for the production of dyes.

BASF had been set up in 1865 to produce other chemicals necessary for dye production, notably soda and acids.

The plant, however, had been erected on the other side of the Rhine river at Ludwigshafen because the town council of Mannheim was afraid that the air pollution of the chemical plant could bother the inhabitants of the town.

In 1866, the dye production processes had also been moved to the BASF site.

The discovery in 1856 by Perkin that aniline could be used to make intense coloring agents had led to the commercial production of synthetic dyes in England from aniline extracted from coal tar.