An 18th Century green pigment, which at the time was unpopular with artists, could be used to make faster computers due to its unusual properties. The dye known as 'Cobalt green' can be used at room temperature unlike most other materials which must be supercooled in order to function carefully. The pigment contains a mixture of zinc oxide and cobalt, making it expensive to use and not very visible, but magnetic; meaning it could be useful in spintronic computing devices.

Conventional electronics like the computer you are using now rely on the movement and accumulation of electrons to carry out calculations or to store data. In addition, spintronics uses the spin of electrons - detected as a weak magnetic force - to increase the computational power of a device. Spintronic devices, in theory, should be much quicker than conventional electronics and require much less power, which is where the magnetic properties of Cobalt green comes in.

Professor Gamelin told BBC News, "the breakthrough with the materials we tested is that they exhibit their magnetic properties at room temperature". 18th Century paint making your computer run faster - who'd have thought it? Certainly not Swedish chemist Sven Rinmann, who invented Cobalt green in 1780.