RUBIES AND SAPPHIRES TO ORDER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9149, 23 July 1908, Page 3

RUBIES AND SAPPHIRES TO ORDER.

The announcement is made in BerPrivy Councillor Professor Miethe, of the celebrated Charlottenburg Technical College, has won an important new triumph for German science by devising an entirely successful and practical method of making artificial sapphires, rubies, and emeralds of any desired size or shape. Experts are so satisfied of the purity of Professor Mithe's products and of the practical impossibility of distinguishing them from natural gems that a Russian grand duchess has just placed an order for a yellow sapphire weighing forty carats. Professor Miethe has also perfected a process for making the rare and costly gem known as alexandrite, which is found only in the most limited quantities in Russia. He claims that his most marked success is with rubies, which he is able to manufacture in the most varying shades, including the famous pigeon's blood red, which commands enormous prices. Miethe's artificial gems can be produced at a remarkable low cojr, rubies and sapphires ranging between ten and fifteen shillings 'a curat, and Alexandrite costing fifty ■shillings a carat. The same proportionate coat is maintained for jewels m higher weight instead of the advancing as in the case of nntal'al gems. Professor Miethe has been attempting for a long time the artificial production of. diamonds, and cl.ums that his ultimate triumph is definitely in sight.