The purpose of this short technological history is to provide an overview of the technological developments that made the synthetic dye industry such a dynamic arena in the period before 1914. To understand the timing of particular dye innovations and the resulting industrial dynamics, it is useful to have a sense of the new knowledge that had to be created to develop innovative dyes. Knowing something about the technological underpinnings of new dyes helps us to understand why Perkin was able to develop the first synthetic dye all by himself, whereas synthetic indigo required large R&D laboratories and many years of systematic development. Because these differences in knowledge and technological requirements had profound effects on the industrial organization of the industry, a technological overview can facilitate a greater understanding of the technical changes surrounding dyes until 1914.

The commercial challenges faced by synthetic dye firms cannot be properly appreciated without some knowledge of how dyers and printers attached dyes to different kind of fabrics. It is absolutely essential to understand the basic steps of coloring different fabrics to appreciate that successful dye firms did not sell a commodity but rather a quite elaborate piece of technological know-how. Similarly, one cannot understand which firms were able to come up with new dyes without knowing something about the chain of chemical reactions that led from basic organic and inorganic chemicals by way of an often large number of intermediate chemicals to the dyes that were purchased by dyers and printers.