The history of man made diamonds is an interesting one, tied as it is to the desire of the Russian Communist government of the 40s to distance itself from reliance on European diamonds which were universally controlled by the De Beers Diamond Cartel.
Everyone is familiar with the use of diamonds for jewelry – however less are so familiar with the absolute reliance on diamonds for industrial applications, including military use. Diamond powder is used as an abrasive to make delicate tools, and to produce drills that can cut through any substance. For these reasons, Stalin saw the need for Russia to have it’s own sources of industrial diamonds. Twin programs were launched in the late 40s and early 50s to explore the vast, remote areas of Russia for suitable geographical features and to develop the technology to make diamonds in the lab.
By the early 50s, Russia had several diamond mines in full production. However they had also begun to produce low grade diamond powder which was suitable for industrial uses. This feat was achieved well before General Electric moved towards perfecting their own process in the same decade. From this point, reliable information about Russian synthetic diamonds becomes a little harder to find. However what is particularly interesting is that through the 60s and beyond, Russia had an arrangement to sell uncut diamonds to the De Beers diamond company. De Beers set up this arrangement so that they could continue to control world supply, and therefore price, of diamonds. De Beers entered the deal with what they believed was a good estimate of the capacity of the known Russian mines – however the Russians continued to produce diamonds at a far higher rate than should have been possible based on the output of comparable mines. The Russian diamonds, called ‘silver bears’ were of extremely high quality, and unusually uniform in size and shape. Although it can only be pure speculation due to the lack of factual information, it is easy to imagine some secret cold war era technology being used to generate immense wealth for the Soviet Union, churning out synthetic diamonds that were of high enough quality to pass inspection from the worlds experts.
We may never know the full story, but today we are able to draw on this manufacturing experience to save money on synthetic gems for jewelry purposes.
This article was submitted by Sheree Perkins who write articles on Jewelry for earringsexpress.com and for www.mylabcreateddiamond.com,
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