The Hall-mark on diamond Premium

The centuries-long quest for synthetic diamonds, also known as lab-grown diamonds or human-made diamonds, came to an end in 1954-55. On February 15, 1955, the creation of the first synthetic diamonds were announced, and it was quickly picked-up by newspapers around the world. A.S.Ganesh tells you more about these diamonds and the man who first made it happen…

Did you know that there was a time in history when diamonds were believed to exist only in India? The hardest natural material on Earth, diamonds were first discovered in India nearly 3,000 years ago. For more than a millennia, India remained the only source of diamonds for the world, a monopoly that the country relinquished only after diamond was mined elsewhere as well. 

Valued for their brilliance, diamonds were initially associated with strength and invincibility, and gradually made its foray as a symbol of love, commitment, and well, all things good. This has undoubtedly led to their popularity in jewellery, where the 4Cs — cut, colour, clarity, and carat — serve as the standard for assessing the quality of diamond. Diamonds, however, go beyond jewellery as well, with their extreme hardness playing a crucial role in industrial cutting and drilling. They’ve found their way into electronics and optics too, and are also being employed in medical tools and sensors. 

Diamond, if you look at it from a composition point of view, is primarily composed of carbon. So is graphite, which, like diamond, is an allotrope of carbon. Or even coal, which contains mainly carbon, along with impurities. They are all, however, vastly different in terms of structure, hardness, and conductivity. 

What makes a diamond a diamond is the fact that the pure carbon atoms are arranged in a crystal lattice with the 3D bonds making it one of the hardest known materials. Carbon transforms into diamond under extreme heat and pressure, a process that only occurs naturally deep within the Earth’s mantle. 

Ever since it was discovered that diamond was in fact a form of carbon, the race to create non-natural diamonds was on. It eventually took centuries of efforts before Howard Tracy Hall succeeded in creating human-made diamonds. 

Born in Ogden, Utah, U.S. on October 20, 1919, Hall hero-worshipped American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison in his childhood. He was so inspired by Edison that by the time he reached his fourth grade, he made it his life’s goal to work for General Electric (GE), a company closely associated with the inventor.