page_title: Larry Paul Kelley
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Larry Paul Kelley / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of the October 1920 issue of Popular Science magazine, painted by American illustrator Norman Rockwell. It depicts an inventor working on a perpetual motion machine. The device shown is a "mass leverage" device, where the spherical weights on the right have more leverage than those on the left, supposedly creating a perpetual rotation, but there are a greater number of weights to the left, balancing the device.
context_page_description: Larry Paul Kelley, also known as Larry P. Kelley, is an American inventor and gemologist who developed proprietary methods for manufacturing man-made gemstones. He also invented a method for making high efficient crystalline silicon material for solar cells. Kelley received degrees at the University of Michigan in science, chemistry and physics. He founded the Shelby Gem Factory in 1970 to manufacture artificial gems.
context_section_description: Born in 1944 and raised in Hart, Michigan, Kelly was influenced by his father, Laurence, who worked on repairing auto bodies. His father had a set of Popular Science magazines which he read through often with much interest as a boy. As a 12-year-old boy Kelley did an experiment one day based on one of these magazine articles. He understood that ruby was a chemical mixture of aluminum oxide and chromium oxide. He observed that some sandpaper that his father used had aluminum oxide dust. Kelley took some of this dust and placed onto a firebrick. He put a chip of chrome with  the aluminum oxide sandpaper dust, melted them with high heat, and serendipitously created his first ruby, albeit of poor quality.
  As a teen, Kelley fostered his interest in science and experimentation. As a thirteen year old he shot homemade rockets over the local lake. He got into trouble with local police authorities when permission was denied to shoot these rockets so close to a heavily populated area.
  Kelley and his brother Arthur made some small wooden workshops in 1961 to do experiments with chemicals. In 1962 when they blew up these workshops after mixing sulfur potassium chlorate with aluminum oxide dust the boys were seriously injured but survived.
caption: Magazine
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