Cobalt blue
Cobalt blue in impure forms had long been used in Chinese porcelain, but it was independently discovered as a pure alumina-based pigment by Louis Jacques Thénard in 1802. Commercial production began in France in 1807. The first recorded use of "cobalt blue" as a color name in English was in 1777. The leading world manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Benjamin Wegner's Norwegian company Blaafarveværket ("blue colour works" in Dano-Norwegian). Germany was also famous for production, especially the blue colour works ("Blaufarbenwerke") in the Ore Mountains of Saxony.
Alcian blue stain
In addition to its wide use as a stain Alcian blue has also been used in other diverse applications e.g. gelling agent for lubricating fluids, modifiers for electrodes, charged coating agents etc.
The Monstral blue found to coat the inside of copper vessels used to process phthalic acid derivatives had led to the discovery of Phthalocyanine in 1907. Attracted by the brilliance, stability and insolubility of this chromophore, attempts were made to reversibly modify it so that it would be carried into fabric in a solution and then easily precipitated (ingrained) into an unleachable but finely well dispersed deposit (hence the name "ingrain dyeing"). From this attempt, Alcian blue (Ingrain blue 1) was first synthesized by the ICI dyestuffs department under N. H. Haddock and C. Wood in the early 1940s and patented in 1947, originally as a textile dye. In 1950 it was used by Steedman as a selective dye for mucins. While the popularity of Alcian blue expanded exponentially, the difficulty involved in its production due to environmentally hazardous intermediate steps made its availability difficult and ICI stopped producing it by 1973. Many of the alternate sources sold similar looking color products with unreliable staining.