Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Blueprints

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

The story of why blueprints were blue is more involved than you think. It involves a chemical process and the Prussian Army. Yeah you heard me right.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the Planet Money Podcast, we ask questions like, who decides when we're in a recession? Why does every insurance company seem to have a mascot? Do food expiration dates even matter? I'm Jeff Guo, co-host of NPR's Planet Money, where we bring you stories about people, about weird schemes and wonderful mistakes, to show you how the economy actually works.

Listen to Planet Money from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too Dave's here in spirit when you put us all together you can call us the blue main group. That's best I could come up with on short notes. Yeah, this is the I guess the conclusion of our two part series on colors, although we have done colors in the past. I know we did in the go. I know we did in the go. And I think we did a short stuff on paint, blue, right? Yes, and some other stuff, it's come up and some other things. But I think colors is going to be a never ending suite. There's a lot of colors to cover. That's right.

And this is a story of not only a color, but a process. And we're talking about the color, Prussian blue. And that is the color of a Blueprint, like in the old days when Blueprints were really blue, like Blueprints for a house or a building or a bridge or a tank or whatever you're going to design. That blue is called Prussian Blue. Yeah, and I mean, if you go and look at Blueprints up to about the 50s, I would say you are going to find actual Blueprints up to about the 50s, I would say, you are going to find

actual Blueprints, like you said. And there was a guy named John Herschel. He was an English astronomer, chemist, and photographer. And this is back when photographer is really something. This is the 1840s. In 1842, he figured out that Prussian Blu's photo-re photo reactive meaning that when you expose it to Light you can get Prussian Blue and he figured out that you could use that chemical reaction to make copies of things It's extraordinarily clever and I think John Herschel deserves to be in the inventor's hall of fame for this. Is he not? I don't know.

No, okay. If he is, he deserves to be there. If not, he deserves to be there. I agree. So this is the process. It's called cyanotype. And it was what early photographers used. In fact, the very first published photography book was made with cyanotype.

Yeah, that was by the way that was by Anna Atkins, who's 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae, get this chuck, colon, cyanotype impressions. Amazing. So all of a sudden, architects and engineers were all over this stuff as well, because they realized, hey, if you can make a photograph using this cyanotype process, you can make a copy

of something and we're really tired of redrawing everything over and over. Right, exactly. So the process involves producing blue ferric ferocionite. That's the chemical name for Prussian blue. And you'll notice there's a lot of ferric stuff in there. That means it's made from iron salts, But it also a cyanide in it and just from this Researching this episode check I finally understood what cyan as a blue refers to it's referring to cyanide. Yeah Did you know that already? No, well, I thought that was pretty cool

That's awesome But if you take a drawing of something and you can put it on something that's basically see through, these days they use like clear plastic if you're doing something like this. And you have a line drawing and you put that line drawing on top of a paper that's been treated in blue ferric ferrocyanide and these iron salts that make that. And you expose it to light then that the paper beneath that's treated in the Prussian blue turns blue in every place except for where those lines were on top of it. Yeah, so it's like a photo image in a dark room, and in fact you have to do it in a dark room, just like you would a photograph.

So that's why they would draw it in regular ink on paper and then the reverse negative image of that would be white drawing on blue paper. And a really nice looking blue. Yeah, yeah, it's gorgeous blue. Pression blue is fantastic. Yeah, man, I was typing in Prussian blue things and I saw some suit jackets, some wool suit jackets. Prussian blue gorgeous. Yeah, you'd look like a member of the Prussian army from the 19th century. That's right, that's why they named it that, right? Yeah, do you want to take a break

and then come back and talk about where your Prussian Blue came from? Let's do it. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stop you should know. You should know. All right.

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wherever you listen to podcasts. At the Planet Money Podcast, we ask questions like, who decides when we're in a recession? Why does every insurance company seem to have a mascot? Do food expiration dates even matter? I'm Jeff Guo, co-host of NPR's Planet Money, where we bring you stories about people, about weird schemes and wonderful mistakes, to show you how the economy actually works.

Listen to Planet Money from NPR on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Prussian Blue finds its origins in the laboratory of an alchemist and a die maker of all places. It's a pretty cool place for a new thing to be created, especially something as beautiful as Prussian Blue. And the alchemist was a guy named Johann Conrad Dippel. How would you say Conrad in German Chuck? That's probably right. Conrad or Conrad. I don't know actually. Well, we'll just call him Mr. Dippel. He was the alchemist.

He was the air-dippel. He was the alchemist and the die maker was a guy named Deesbock. We're just going with Mr. Deesbock for this guy. And they shared this lab in Berlin. And by sharing a lab and sharing one another is using like borrowing, I should say, a cup of one another's ingredients here there. They ended up accidentally creating Prussian blood.

Yeah, exactly. I think the chemist was working on medicines, like elixirs and things. And D'sbock as a die maker was great at making these dies. And as the story goes, he was making a deep red die one day when he borrowed some potash from his chemist friend and that turned it into this wonderful, wonderful Prussian blue.

He went back in, hair dippled and said, I got to figure out what this stuff is. And he figured out the secret was that the potash had oxblood and when he mixed that with iron sulfate, that caused this amazing blue to, what does it do? Does it unveil itself? Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to put it. So Prussian blue is unveil itself. And at first they called it Berlin blue.

And it only became known as Prussian Blue later on because it was used to die the uniforms of the Prussian Army in the early 19th century. And depending on what part of the continent you were on, or whether you were on the continent at all, calling it Prussian Blue was either a term of endearment or a term of disparagement, because the Prussians helped save the British's cookies at water, blue, and defeated Napoleon. So if you were French, you didn't think very highly of the Prussians or their blue.

If you were English, it was a term of endearment because you were really grateful to the Prussians for coming and saving the day there. That's right. And it became a, just a popular color, like artists loved using it, print makers loved using it. Obviously, these architects loved the result of using it. I'm not sure if they especially loved the color, that was just kind of what color blueprints

turned out to be. But I'm sure they were fine with it. But Herschel died before that blueprinting process was born. I think five years later is when the actual architectural blueprint process that is unfortunately gone because I think it looks really neat. These things you're not going to find that because over the years, a lot of different things happened to either make it fall out of fashion or just make it cheaper and safer and easier to make copies in different ways. I would bet that there's some hipster artisan architectural firm that still uses this process now. You think? Has gone back to it yet. But the reason that has largely been abandoned is because it's a very labor intensive time-intensive process.

very labor intensive time intensive process, even if you're using kind of updated machinery and other processes came along that seemed to do a better job. And plus also, I don't know if everybody's like, we're sick of the blue or whatever because there's another process called diazo white press and it does the same thing, but it gives you like black or gray lines

on a white background. And that's kind of what the, what the, um, architectural plans look like today. They don't look blue anymore. And then shortly after that, they came up with zero graphic copiers, which you just today call it copier. And I didn't realize this either Chuck. They're called zero graphic because this is a dry process, like zero, like dry, like

zero escaping. It's a dry process because you don't have to wet the paper that is receiving the image like you do when you're using the old Prussian blue cyanotype process. Yeah, and I think that's how Xerox got their name, right? Yeah, for sure. Which is a proprietary eponym. Yeah, and I thought, thought the deasoprocess created blue lines Is that not true? I think later on they figured out that if you use blue lines on the original it it makes a cleaner line on the copy That's what that was my take on it. All right, and I think that was sort of like in the 70s and then in the early 2000s is when the deasozzo process started to kind of fade away because ammonia is not something you want to be working with a lot. And they

are also regulations it increased in working with ammonia. And then the digital revolution came along, print technology, the things that were cheaper basically and smaller. All of a sudden you didn't have to have some huge like plot printer in your office to make something like this. And it just, you know, it did like everything. It became cheaper and smaller and faster. Yeah, and I think the printers that can print out, you know, like regulation, size, architectural plans or engineering plans, those became more affordable too. And they're basically just zero-oxes. They're like printers, essentially, just bigger size. One thing I did see Chuck that I didn't realize

pen plotters, it's like a contraption originally where you have a pen and connected to that pen is a bunch of other pens. And so when you're drawing on one paper, the other pens are drawing on their own paper. So you're making copies like that as you're drawing in the first place. Those have come back and they're now computerized.

Yeah, Plotters are super cool. That had a friend years ago that was a sign maker. And he would, you know, these plotters would cut out these designs from the computer files. And it's just really cool to see those things, you know, that automation at work, even for a small business. You know, he was like a team of one. The other thing I wanted to mention too is I think the Diatso's

faded in sunlight, which it was fine for a little while because apparently it takes, you know, like a few months, which was enough if it's like a house plan or something. You don't need it to last forever know, like a few months, which was enough if you're, you know, if it's like a house plan or something, you don't need it to last forever, but eventually they're like, you know, we should probably make something a little more permanent. That connects some dots for me

because I saw on some archivist website that they do not recommend using the de-ozzo print because it's so impermanent. Now I have it. Noings have the battle, as they say. Sion. Sion. Sion. Chuxen's Sion.

I follow it up with a Sion too, and everybody that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.