For want of a nail a war was lost;so goes the tale. There are several real life stories to amplify this statement.Shall we apply this to a vast country like India?
India is very famous for natural lndigo production in the world and was earning a huge foreign exchange. Other countries were searching for an alternative.The German company BASF was the leader in synthetic dyes. A german scientist (Carl Hewmann,if I am right) was frantically working on coal tar for quite sometime but he was un successful. He was trying several additional chemicals but no expected/desired changes occurred. Dejected, he flung the thermo meter which landed in the reaction mixture. Ahoy! in a short time he saw the indigo blue bubbling up in the reactor vessel. The mercury from the broken thermometer had catalysed the reacion. Snthetic indigo was born and Indian industry had to draw shutters unable to compete with the cheap synthetic counterpart.
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