The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-23
MAKING DIAMONDS.
How Nature Does it And Why Man
 Cannot Do It.

Cannot Do It.
 New York Sun.
 All experiments, and they have been
 many.go to show If not to prove that
 diamonds are formed by the slow cool
 ing of specialization of iiquefied car bon in an environment of other fused material at Intense heat under eiorm- ous pressure.
 To obtain any effective approach to the heat of the interior of the earth electric furnaces have been invented
 which are capable of producing tem- perature of $500 degrees centigrade: and vessels of such strength have been made as to stand a pressure of fifty tons to the square inch. To the non- scientific mind these figures are prac- tically ncomprehensible, says the Queen, and tAe vastness of the first set
 can only be dimly imagined when one remembers that in the centigrade reg ister the boiling point of water is rep resented by, 100 degrees.
 As to the second figure. we can vaguely illustrate its meaning by com- pairing 1t with the pressure produced in the underground laboratories Of nature, which is enough to shake a con- tinent. while the mere excess of the
 molten material, which is. as it were, boiling over, is sufficient to devastate whole districts and bury entire cities. The third conassion precedent to the making of diamond is slowness of specialization or. in other words, length of time. Sir William Crookes. who has made diamonds. plunged his white hot crucible into cold water, with the result that any crystals pro- duced generally exploded short time after being liberated from their matrix.
 even if they did not do so before. l If the scientist cannot wait long | enough for the cooling process, the rogue in a hurry to be rich by deceiv- | ing people cannot afford to walt. Hence there is no chance of a swindler achiev- ! ing any real success, for he could not afford to wait long enough for the proper equalization, even if the other conditions were present.
 There are many tests for ascertain | ing the genuineness of a diamond, some simple and some more difficult of carry 1 ing out such as the use of the cathode
 rays. under the influence of which paste does not glow as do the real gems. But nature herself has imposed condition and test which none but | the genuine stones can stand.
 Her test is simply that of time, and ! the proof of fraud, which Is at once | decisive and penal to the artifcially
 made diamond, is simply self-destruc- | tion--it explodes and dissolves itself
 into dust. We have seen that the gem
 is produced under immense pressure, but as the outside solidifies first and carbon has the abnormal property or expanding instead of contracting on
 soiidihcation there is generally con dition of strain in the interior Of the crystal which sooned or later, but usually very soon causes the stone to explode.
 This occurs indeed not infrequently
 in nature, when the gems have crys- | talIized under relatively rapid cooling | and the diamond soon after It's removal | from the enveloping matrix, the so- called "b1ue ground explodes. This is | doubtless the cause with the great l Cuiiinan diamond, the largest yet dis covered, measuring 4 by l-2 and inches and weighing before cutting nearly one and half pounds.
 It was the half only of an enormous | octahedron, which had probably split
 owing to this internal strain. No one in his senses would purchase a gem l which was liable to destroy itself at | any moment and no reputable firm
 would dream of selling jewels which
 might explode even before the customer | got home.
 Chemically produced or scientific 1 diamonds were first experimented for | by J. B. Hannay In or before 1880 and
 by Sydney Marsden in 1881, who pro- l duced black and transparent diamonds; but the first authentic artificial pre-
 paration of the diamond Is due to the celebrated French chemist M. Moissan. | who followed Mir. Marsden's experi-
 ments in 1ss4-1so5.
 | The French savant. however. never
 succeeded in obtaining transparent dia- | monds by his process; at least the white crystals yielded to reagents and | were probably only carborundum and | not plIre carbon These results. al-
 though, deeply interesting to scientists.
 have not the least interest to any one else. For one thing the diamonds" | are so smalI they need a magnifying I glass to see tlAr'. 'the largest ever pro- duced being only one-fortieth of an inch long. ssse