Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/640



T one of the recent sittings of the French Academy of Sciences, Henri Moissan, whose name has lately been prominent in chemistry in connection with several important discoveries, read a communication to the effect that he had finally succeeded in obtaining in his laboratory minute crystals of diamonds. His communication was followed by a paper by Friedel, who has been working for some time past in the same direction, and has attained similar though not yet quite definite results; and, finally, Berthelot, who also was working in the same field, but followed a different track, announced that, in view of the excellent results obtained by Moissan, he abandons his own researches and congratulates his colleague upon his remarkable discovery.

The discovery is not absolutely new, and the French chemist himself mentions two of his English predecessors. Mr. Hannay obtained in 1880 some diamond-like crystals by heating in an iron tube, under high pressure, a mixture of paraffin oil with lamp-black, bone oil, and some lithium; and in the same year Mr. Sidney Marsden, by heating some silver with sugar charcoal, obtained black carbon crystals with curved edges. Besides, it was generally known that a black powder, composed of transparent microscopical crystals having the hardness of diamond, is deposited on the negative electrode when a weak galvanic current is passed through liquid chloride of carbon. But these crystals, like those of Mr. Marsden, belong to the easily obtained variety of black diamonds known as carbonados; while some of the crystals obtained by Moissan are real colorless and crystallized diamonds—the gem we all know and admire.

For industry and everyday life the infinitesimal quantities of diamond dust obtained by the French chemist may have no immediate value, and some time will probably be required before a modest-sized jewel is made in a laboratory. But the discovery has a great scientific interest, inasmuch as it is the outcome of a whole series of researches which have recently been made with the view of artificially reproducing all sorts of minerals and rocks, and which are admirably chosen for ultimately throwing new light upon the intimate structure of physical bodies.