| Show PROPOSE TO BEAT NATURE diamond of powerful fay ray will soon be made by niagara Nia garas a power the manufacture of artificial dia monds has long been regarded as an impossibility A score of men learned in chemistry and skilled as lapidaries have years in a fruitless endear or to equal the product of nature in this Is direction now however prospect of the manufacture of dia monds by scientific means Is consid ered so likely as to be predicted in a government report T G martin an expert special agent of the census office has written a long and very in report on the electrical in destries dus tries of the united states in which he incidentally refers to the attempts that have been made to produce dia monds artificia ll he ile recalls the fact that doissan the frenchman pushed the employment rf the e electric arc so far as to produce minute frag diamonds in his furnaces doissan also the production ol 01 graphite from a diamond heated in the arc are and from the similar treatment of sugar charcoal chai coal purified by chlorine and of purified wood charcoal in fact says mr martin it was due to his investigation in this field that he was led to his celebrated ob atlon on the formation of dia dla monds by the sudden cooling in mer cury or lead of molten iron setu saturated rated with carbon out of all such work it was but natural that fanciful specula eions should arise as to the possibility of establishing factories for the lar manufacture of genuine diamonds at niagara falls where the cheap current and other essentials would be available but nothing has resulted within the period under considers cons con sidera ion from thee plausible and sanguine theories the fact remains however that in our modern electrical furnaces diamond dust has been produced and the steps leading to the manufacture of larger crystals bill mill be but |
