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COLUMNIST MATERIAL SCIENCE
Legend credits [purple dye's] discovery to Herakles, or rather to his dog, whose mouth was stained purple from chewing on snails along the Levantine coast
Understanding color is one of the keys to success in the printing industry. It also can be very interesting history. A dictionary defines purple as "any of a group of colors with a hue between that of violet and red" and as a "symbol of royalty or high office." Historically, the color purple has been associated with royalty and power, but the secret of its power lies in the glands of tiny shellfish creatures.
The earliest archaeological evidence for the origins of purple dyes points to the Minoan civilization in Crete, about 1900 B.C. The ancient land of Canaan (its corresponding Greek name was Phoenicia, which means "land of the purple") was the center of the ancient purple dye industry "Tyrian Purple," the purple dye of the ancients...