Friedrich Bayer

Friedrich Bayer (1825-1880) was a dye salesman who partnered with the master dyer Johann Friedrich Weskott to enter Friedrich Bayer et. Compagnie into the commercial register in Barmen, Germany, on August 1, 1863. Bayer brought commercial and market knowledge, Weskott the technical dyeing skill. The company first produced synthetic fuchsine and aniline dyes using the new coal-tar chemistry. After Friedrich Bayer's death in 1880 his son Friedrich Bayer Jr. (1851-1920), a chemist who had joined the company in 1873, drove its scientific expansion into pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals.

Bayer was founded in 1863 in Barmen, now part of Wuppertal, Germany, by two men with complementary skills: Friedrich Bayer, a dye merchant, and Johann Friedrich Weskott, a master dyer. They started during the rapid growth of German synthetic chemistry, when the textile industry was switching from expensive natural dyes to cheaper coal-tar colours. Their firm, Friedr. Bayer et comp., made synthetic fuchsine and aniline dyes. Bayer handled commercial expansion and sales, Weskott the manufacturing processes. The company later moved its main plant and head office to Leverkusen on the Rhine, which is still the headquarters. As the dye market saturated in the late nineteenth century, Bayer's chemists began looking at medical uses for their compounds. In 1897 the Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann synthesized acetylsalicylic acid in a stable, pure form; Bayer registered the trademark Aspirin in 1899 and marketed it worldwide, which turned a dye works into a pharmaceutical company.