River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1906-01-11
OF DIAMONDS
PROCESS EXPLAINED BY NOTED
ENGLISH SCIENTIST.
Gems from the Heavens Not an I'm
possibility - Explosion of
the Stones Is Quite
Common.

In the course of lecture on "Dia-
monds" before the British Association
at Kimberley recently, says the Lon
don Daily Mail, Sir William Crookes
explained to the assembled company
how the precious gems might be man
ufactured.
''The first necessity" he said, sis to
select pure iron free from sulphur,
silicon, phosphorus, etc., and to pack
it in a carbon crucible with pure char
coal from sugar. The crucible must
then be put into the body of the cleo
trio furnace. After a few minutes
heating to a temperature above 1000
degrees c., a temperature at which the
iron melts like wax and volatilizes in
clouds, the current is stopped and the
dazzling, fiery crucible is plunged be-
meath the surface of cold water, where
it is held till it sinks below a red
heat.
"The sudden cooling solidif1es the
outer layer of iron and holds the in
ner molten mass in a tight grip. The
expansion of the inner liquid on solidi-
flying produces an enormous pressure,
and under the stress of this pressure
the dissolved carbon separates out in
transparent forms micro
scopic, it is true-all the same verita-
BILE diamonds, with crystalline form
and appearance, color, hardness and
action on light the same as the nat.
ural gem"
Attention was called to the sug-
gestion that the diamond is a gift
from heaven conveyed to earth in
meteoric showers. According to this
hypothesis, said the lecturer, holes
we're bored in the earth by the impact
of monstrous meteors, the larger
masses boring the holes in their fall,
distributed diamonds broadcast.
Bizarre as such a theory is" OBJ
served the great scientist, II am bound
to say there are many circumstances
which show that the notion of the
heavens raining diamonds is not i'm
possible" In proof of this he showed
the audience photographs of diamonds
he had extracted from'a meteorite
The lecture abounded in interesting
passages. Here is one:
cit is not uncommon for diamond
to explode soon after it reaches the
surface; some have been known to
burst in the pockets of the miners or
when held in the warm hand, and the
loss is the greater because large stones
are more liable to explode or fly to
pieces than small ones.
valuable stones have been de-
stroyed in this way, and it is whis-
pered that cunning dealers are not
averse to allowing responsible clients
to handle or carry in their warm
pockets large crystals fresh from the
mine. By way of safeguard against
explosion, some dealers imbed large
diamonds in raw potato to insure sale
transit to England"
By the end of 1904, ten tons of dla-
monds had come from the Kimberley
mines, valued at 100000 900. This
mass of gems could be accommodated
in a box five feet square and six feet
high.
According to the lecturer. one of the
most remarkable gems in existence is
a phosphorescing diamond in the ros-
session of Mrs Kunz, of New York,
which will phosphorcsce in the dark
for some minutes after being exposed
to a small pocket electric light and if
rubbed on a piece of cloth leaves a
long streak of phosphoresence.