ARTIFICIAL DIAMONDS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 108, 31 January 1921, Page 6

ARTIFICIAL DIAMONDS

DECLARED TO BE BETTER THAN

NATURAL GEMS

Early in November Reuter’s correspondent at Hamburg announced that the Nobel Dynamite Company was prepared to market artificial diamonds at an early dele. The "Boerse.ns Zeitung says the Nobel Dynamite Company of Hamburg has taken out a patent for the manufacture of diamonds of a superior quality to natural diamonds. The Nobel Company is said already to be in a position to produce several hundred carats daily, and no technical obstaclefl exist to the gradual increase of the daily production to 2000 or 3000 carats. The costs of production are said io be so low that the stones can be marketed at a carat price of 10 000 to 12,000 marks, while the present world price of natural diamonds is about 1(1,000 marks—an advantage ot at least 25 per cent. By the conquest of German SouthWest- Africa the Zuederitz diamond field, in AValfisch Dav, passed to the British. From small beginnings. and very smt 11 diamonds, it had been developed into a very good one, and the most galling condition of the surrender of the territory was the clause, insisted on by General Botha, that the stock of diamonds held for the purpose of equalisation of the market must he surrendered as national property. The value of tho stock was such that it had been ear-marked as a valuable part of the war chest. The Nobel Company may have discovered a new- and cheaper method than the long and laborious formulae of ITenri Moisson, who had succeeded in producing diamonds, and his method was verified bv Sir William Crookes in conjunction with Professor Austen-Rob-erts A quick method was suggested to Sir Andrew Noble and Sir Frederick Abel, when engaged in gas pressure measurements of the explosion of cordite inside enclosed spaces. Under such conditions a pressure of 52 tons per square inch was obtained, and the temperature was measured up to 5400 deg. Centrigrade, giving conditions favourable to the liquefaction of carbon, and if the time of explosion were sufficient to allow the reactions to take place, one should expect io vet liquid carbon solidified in the crystalline state—the true diamond. Checked by the Moisson fusediron method. the test proved satisfactory. Tho find of meteorite fragments in the Canyon Diablo, Arizona, of which six tons were collected, were tested by A. E. Foote and verified by Crookes and Moisson, and they found nature had made diamonds by the same method as Noble and Abel had found. The largest artificial diamond produced so far was one accidentally found in a steel box made in a Luxemburg steel foundry, and it had a diameter only of l-50th of an inch. Not a commercial proposition. The method of liquefaction of carbon under intense pressure and heat to produce the diamond is now accepted. London is the market for the raw diamond; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp have the practical monopoly of diamond cutting, though a little is done in New York. The attempt to cut diamonds in London about 1878 began well, bu'. failed to take root. But the industry had been started recently at Brighton as a means of providing l work for ex-sol-diers, and already over .£300,000 have been spent over the buildings and machinery, and 500 hands are employed, while it is expected that in a reasonable time there will be employment for 1000 people. Paris is at present the selling market for the polished stones, but there is no reason why London should not bo the market for the polished stones, as well as for raw diamonds, if the success of the Brighton factory is reproduced bv other factories. The Dutch learnt the art of diamond cutting and polishing from the natives of Java, and introduced it to Holland, which ever since has been the chief place of the industry. But that is no reason why the practical monopoly of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and An’wcrp should not pass to England, which as the centre of tho great diamond-produc-ing regions, is the proper and most convenient place for the raw diamond market. tho industry f>f cutting and polishing, and the market for the polished dia- ' mond.