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Short Stuff: Blueprints · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. Dates here in spirit.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: When you put us all together, you can call us
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the blue Man group. Best they could come up with
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: on short notes.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the I guess, the conclusion of our
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: two part series on colors. Although we have done colors
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: in the past. I know we did Indigo, and I
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: think we did a short stuff on Haint blue, right.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, and some other stuff. It's come up in some
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: other things, but I think colors is going to be
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a never ending suite. There's a lot of colors to cover.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: That's right. And this is a story of not only
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: a color, but a process. And we're talking about the
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: color of Prussian blue. And that is the color of
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: a blueprint, like in the old days when blueprints were
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: really blue, like blueprints for a house or a building,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: or a bridge or a tank or whatever you're going
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: to design. That blue is called Prussian blue.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean if you go and look up
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  Speaker 1: blueprints up to about the fifties, I would say you
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: are going to find actual blue blueprints, like you said.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And there was a guy named John Herschel. He was
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: an English astronomer, chemist and photographer. And this is back
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  Speaker 1: when photographer is really something. This is the eighteen forties.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen forty two, he figured out that Prussian blue
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: is photo reactive, meaning that when you expose it to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: light you can get Prussian blue. And he figured out
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: that you could use that chemical reaction to make copies
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of things. It's extraordinarily clever. And I think John Herschel
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: deserves to be in the Inventors Hall of Fame for this.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Is he not I don't know. If he is, he
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: deserves to be there. If not, he deserves to be there.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: I agree. So this is the process. It's called cyanotype,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: and it was what early photographers used. In fact, the
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: very first published photography book was made with cyanotype.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was, by the way, that was by Anna
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Atkins who's eighteen forty three book Photographs of British Algae.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Get this, Chuck colon Cyana type impressions amazing.
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  Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, architects and engineers were all
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: over this stuff as well, because they realize, hey, if
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: you can make a photograph using this syanotype process, you
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: can make a copy of something. And we're really tired
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of redrawing everything over and over right exactly.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So the process involves producing blue ferric ferris cyanide. That's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the chemical name for Prussian blue. And you'll notice there's
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of feric stuff in there. That means it's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: made from iron salt, but it also is cyanide in it.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And just from this researching this episode, Chuck, I finally
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: understood what cyan as a blue refers to. It's referring
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: to cyanide. Yeah, did you know that already? No, Well,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty cool.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
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  Speaker 1: But if you take a drawing of something and you
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: can put it on something that's basically see through these days,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: they use like clear plastic. If you're doing something like
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: this and you have a line drawing and you put
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that line drawing on top of a paper that's been
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: treated in blue ferric fair cyanide and these iron salts
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that make that, and you expose it to light, then
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that the paper beneath that's treated in the Prussian blue
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: turns blue in every place except for where those lines
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: were on top of it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's like a photo image in a dark room.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And in fact, you have to do it in a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: dark room, just like you would a photograph. So that's
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: why you know. They would draw it in regular ink
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: on paper, and then the reverse negative image of that
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: would be white drawing on blue paper and a really
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: nice looking blue.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gorgeous blue. Pressure and blue is fantastic.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, I was typing in Prussian blue things and
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I saw some suit jackets, some wool suit jackets. Prussian blue. Gorgeous.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd look like a member of the Prussian army
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: from the nineteenth century.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: That's right, That's why they named it that, right.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you want to take a break and then
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: come back and talk about where Prussian blue came from?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Well, now we're on the road, driving in your Chuck,
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: I want to learn a thing or two from josh
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Am Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, job.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So, Prussian blue finds its origins in the laboratory of
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: an alchemist and a die maker. Of all places, it's
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: a pretty cool place for a new thing to be created,
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  Speaker 1: especially something as beautiful as pressure blue. And the alchemist
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: was a guy named Johann Conrad Dipple. How would you
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: say Conrad in German Chuck, Mmm, that's probably right. Conrad
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: or Conrad, I don't know. Actually, okay, well we'll just
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: call him mister Dipple. He was the alchemist hair dip
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Air Dipple. Yeah, he was the alchemist, and the dye
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  Speaker 1: maker was a guy named Diesbach. We're just going with
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: mister Disbach for this guy. And they shared this lab
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: in Berlin, and by sharing a lab and sharing one
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: another's or using like borrowing I should say, a cup
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of one another's you know ingredients here there, they ended
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: up accidentally creating Prussian blue.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I think the chemists was working on medicines
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: like elixers and things, and Diesbach, as a die maker,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: was great at making these dyes. And as the story goes,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: he was making a deep red dye one day when
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: he borrowed some potash from his chemist friend and that
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: turned it into this wonderful, wonderful Prussian blue. He went
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  Speaker 2: back in hair Dipple and said, I got to figure
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: out what this stuff is. And he figured out the
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: secret was that the potash had ox blood and when
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: he mixed that with the iron sulfate that caused this
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  Speaker 2: amazing blue to what does it do? Does it unveil itself.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great way to put it.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So Prussian blue has unveiled itself. And at first they
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: called it Berlin blue, and it only became known as
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Prussian blue later on because it was used to dye
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the uniforms of the Prussian army in the early nineteenth century,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and depending on what part of the continent you were on,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: or whether you were on the continent at all, calling
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it Prussian blue was either a term of endearment or
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: a term of disparagement because the Prussians helped save the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: British as cookies at Waterloo and defeated Napoleon. So if
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you were French, you didn't think very highly of the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Prussians or they're blue. If you were English, it was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: a term of endearment because you were really grateful to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the Prussians for coming in saving the day.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: There, that's right.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: And it became a just a popular color. Like artists
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: loved using it, print makers loved using it. Obviously, these
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: architects loved the result of using it. I'm not sure
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: if they especially loved the color. That was just kind
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: of what color blueprints turned out to be, right, But
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, they were fine with it, but Herschel died
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: before that blue printing process was born. I think five
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: years later is when the actual architectural blueprint process that
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: is unfortunately gone, because I think it looks really neat
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: these days. You're not going to find that because over
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the years a lot of different things happened to either
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: make it fall out of fashion or just make it
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: cheaper and safer and easier to make copies in different ways.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I would bet that there's some hipster artisan architectural firm
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: that still uses this process now you think has gone
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: back to it, Yeah, but the reason that has largely
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: been abandon is because it's a very labor intensive, time
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: intensive process, even if you're using kind of updated machinery,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and other processes came along that seem to do a
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: better job. And plus also I don't know if everybody's like,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: we're sick of the blue or whatever, because there's another
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: process called diazo white press, and it does the same thing,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but it gives you like black or gray lines on
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a white background, and that's kind of what the what
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the architectural plants look like today. They don't look blue anymore.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And then shortly After that, they came up with zerographic copiers,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: which you just today call it copier. And I didn't
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: realize this either, chuck. They're called zero graphic because this
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: is a dry process, like zero like dry, like zero scaping.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: It's a dry process because you don't have to wet
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the paper that is receiving the image like you do
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: when you're using the old Prussian blue cyanotype process.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's how Xerox got their name, right.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, which is a proprietary eponym.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I thought I thought the diaso process created
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: blue lines. Is that not true?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I think later on they figured out that if you
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: use blue lines on the original, it makes a cleaner
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: line on the copy. That's what that was my take
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: All right, And I think that was sort of like
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: in the seventies and then in the early two thousands
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: is when the d'azzo process started to kind of fade
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: away because you know, ammonia is not something you want
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: to be working with a lot, and there are also
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: regulations that increased in working with ammonia. And then you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: the digital revolution came along print technology things that were
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: cheaper basically and smaller. All of a sudden, you didn't
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: have to have some huge like plot printer in your
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: office to make something like this, and it, you know,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: it did, like everything, it became cheaper and smaller and faster.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the printers that can print out
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like regulation size architectural planes or engineering plans,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: those became more affordable too, And they're basically just xeroxes.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: They're like printers essentially, just bigger size. The one thing
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I did see, Chuck that I didn't realize pen plotters.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: It's like a contraption originally where you have a pen
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and connected to that pen is a bunch of other pens,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and so when you're drawing on one paper, the other
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: pins are drawing on their own paper. So you're making
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: copies like that as you're drawing in the first place.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Those have come back and they're now computerized.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, plotters are super cool. At a frien years ago
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: that was a sign maker and he would, you know,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: these plotters would cut out these designs from the computer
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: files and it's just really cool to see those things.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: You know, that automation at work, even for like a
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: small business. You know, he was like a team of one.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to mention too, is I
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: think the d'azza's faded in sunlight. Oh okay, which it
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: was fine for a little while because apparently it takes
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: you know, like a few months, which was enough if
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: you're you know, if it's like a house plan or something,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you don't need it to last forever. But eventually they
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: were like, you know, we should probably make something a
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: little more permanent.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: That connects the dots for me, because I saw on
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: some archivist website that they do not recommend using the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: d'atzo print because it isn't it's so impermanent. Now I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: have it, knowing's half the battle, as they say, Cyan Cian.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Chuck said, Cyan, I follow it up with a Scian too,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and everybody that means short stuff is out.
• 11:42
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• 11:44
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