Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vocal bomb here. If you have a blueprint for success,
Speaker 1: you're not alone, at least when it comes to the
Speaker 1: blueprint part. The word blueprint has become part of a
Speaker 1: global lexicon used to symbolize a plan, strategy, or framework.
Speaker 1: But what is a blueprint really? At its most basic,
Speaker 1: a blueprint is a reproduction of an image that already exists.
Speaker 1: Engineers or architects use these large format prints to illustrate
Speaker 1: project plans, using white lines and text on a backdrop
Speaker 1: of blue. And it's not just because they happen to
Speaker 1: like the color. A blueprint signature hue is tied to
Speaker 1: a chemical process. In eighteen forty two, an English photographer, chemist,
Speaker 1: and astronomer named John Herschel discovered the combining ferric ammonium
Speaker 1: citrate and potassium fair cyanide created a chemical reaction and
Speaker 1: a compound called blue ferric fair sydanide or Prussian blue.
Speaker 1: This photosensitive solution could be used to reproduces documents in
Speaker 1: a process similar to developing a photograph from a negative.
Speaker 1: The process, called cyana type, was adopted by early photographers
Speaker 1: and led to the first book illustrated by photography, and
Speaker 1: then became the darling of architects and engineers. Here's how
Speaker 1: it works. First, you create a drawing, then transfer it
Speaker 1: to vellum paper or tracing cloth, both of which are
Speaker 1: so thin that light can pass through them. Then you
Speaker 1: saturate a piece of regular paper with an ammonium potassium
Speaker 1: mixture and let it dry. Place the transparent vellum or
Speaker 1: tracing cloth with the drawing atop the paper coated in
Speaker 1: the chemical solution, Shine a bright light down through the drawing,
Speaker 1: and wait for the chemical reaction to take place. Within
Speaker 1: a matter of minutes, the chemical coated paper will be
Speaker 1: transformed into blue ferric fairr cyanide, with one important exception,
Speaker 1: wherever the light can't shine through the top paper because
Speaker 1: of the lines from the drawing, the blue printing paper
Speaker 1: remains white. After rinsing the paper in cold water to
Speaker 1: halt the chemical action and allowing the paper to dry
Speaker 1: in the dark, you're left with a nearly identical duplicate
Speaker 1: of the original drawing, just the lines are white and
Speaker 1: the background is dark, where the lines were originally dark
Speaker 1: and the background was light. Although this process requires several steps,
Speaker 1: it became a big hit with the pre computer crowd
Speaker 1: of the nineteen and twenty centuries, as it was still
Speaker 1: faster and cheaper than creating large scale drawings by hand.
Speaker 1: The story of the creation of Prussian blue has all
Speaker 1: the elements of a dark fairy tale. In seventeen o four,
Speaker 1: an alchemist and a dye maker shared a laboratory in Berlin, Germany.
Speaker 1: The former, Johann Konrad Dipple, sought to create a universal remedy,
Speaker 1: one that treated everything from animal mange to human epilepsy
Speaker 1: by boiling hoofs, horns, and leather into a smelly elixir.
Speaker 1: The ladder, a fellow named Teese Box made batches of
Speaker 1: vibrant dyes. One day, as these, Box simmered insects, alum,
Speaker 1: iron and sulfate to create a deep red, he borrowed
Speaker 1: some potash to the alchemist and added it to his
Speaker 1: viscous mixture. This horrible brew created a blue as deep
Speaker 1: as the night sky. After retracing the steps in the process,
Speaker 1: Dipple realized the potash contained ox blood that, when mixed
Speaker 1: with iron sulfate, caused a chemical reaction and turned a
Speaker 1: brilliant shade of blue. Unlike other blue dyes that were
Speaker 1: difficult to make and easily faded. This blue remained vivid,
Speaker 1: and it was inexpensive. Other blue dyes of the time
Speaker 1: required ingredients like lapis lazili, which at the time cost
Speaker 1: more than gold. Initially, Dipple called the color Berlin blue
Speaker 1: as a nod to his city of residents. Later it
Speaker 1: was called Prussian blue because it was used to dye
Speaker 1: uniform fabric for the Prussian Army. The color became both
Speaker 1: the symbol of aggression and a term of endearment because
Speaker 1: of the army's fierce battles and serendipitous interventions and conflicts
Speaker 1: like the Battle of Waterloo. By the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Prussian blue had found favor with impressionist artists and Japanese printmakers.
Speaker 1: As the nineteen hundreds wore on, it became the hue
Speaker 1: of newspaper inc typewriter ribbon, and eyeshadow. Scientists even discovered
Speaker 1: Prussian blue works as an antidote to heavy metal poisoning
Speaker 1: by acting as a magnet to attract and evacuate heavy
Speaker 1: metals from the bloodstream. Eventually, Prussian blue became as important
Speaker 1: for its practicality as its novelty. But not While John
Speaker 1: Herschel was alive to see it. It wasn't until five
Speaker 1: years after his death that blueprints were recognized as an
Speaker 1: inexpensive and simple way to reproduce architectural drawings. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the blue printing process was a dying art
Speaker 1: in the United States because new technology was becoming more prevalent.
Speaker 1: Zerographic copies could create duplicates with the push of a button,
Speaker 1: and by the nine eighties the architecture, engineering, and construction
Speaker 1: industries were making the move from hand drawing to computer
Speaker 1: aided design that could be printed on large scale paper. Today,
Speaker 1: blueprints aren't usually blue. They're most often black or gray
Speaker 1: lines on a white background. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Laurel Dove and produced by a Playing Brain. Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and mons of other original topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And for
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.