The development and discovery of the aniline colouring matters were not, of course, possible until after the extensive adoption of house-gas for illuminating purposes, and even then it was many years before the waste products from the gas-works came to have an appreciable value of their own.  This, however, came with the increased utilitarianism of the commerce of the present century, but although aniline was first discovered in 1826 by Unverdorben, in the materials produced by the dry distillation of indigo (Portuguese, anil, indigo), it was not until thirty years afterwards, namely, in 1856, that the discovery of the method of manufacture of the first aniline dye, mauveine, was announced, the discovery being due to the persistent efforts of Perkin, to whom, together with other chemists working in the same field, is due the great advance which has been made in the chemical knowledge of the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen compounds.  Scientists appeared to work along two planes; there were those who discovered certain chemical compounds in the resulting products of reactions in the treatment of existing vegetation, and there were those who, studying the wonderful constituents in coal-tar, the product of a past age, immediately set to work to find therein those compounds which their contemporaries had already discovered.  Generally, too, with signal success.

The discovery of benzene in 1825 by Faraday was followed in the course of a few years by its discovery in coal-tar by Hofmann.  Toluene, which was discovered in 1837 by Pelletier, was recognised in the fractional distillation of crude naphtha by Mansfield in 1848.  Although the method of production of mauveine on a large scale was not accomplished until 1856, yet it had been noticed in 1834, the actual year of its recognition as a constituent of coal-tar, that, when brought into contact with chloride of lime, it gave brilliant colours, but it required a considerable cheapening of the process of aniline manufacture before the dyes commenced to enter into competition with the old natural dyes.

The isolation of aniline from coal-tar is expensive, in consequence of the small quantities in which it is there found, but it was discovered by Mitscherlich that by acting upon benzene, one of the early distillates of coal-tar, for the production of nitro-benzole, a compound was produced from which aniline could be obtained in large quantities.  There were thus two methods of obtaining aniline from tar, the experimental and the practical.

In producing nitrobenzole (nitrobenzene), chemically represented as (C_{6}H_{5}NO_{2}), the nitric acid used as the reagent with benzene, is mixed with a quantity of sulphuric acid, with the object of absorbing water which is formed during the reaction, as this would tend to dilute the efficiency of the nitric acid.  The proportions are 100 parts of purified benzene, with a mixture of 115 parts of concentrated nitric acid (HNO_{3}) and 160 parts of concentrated