laboratory.
The London research organization subsequently became the London Diamond
Information Bureau, research being concentrated in Johannesburg.
Bort
Products absorbed various subsidiaries and became Bort and Hard Metal
Products (S.A.) Ltd., both a seller of industrial diamonds and of
tools, having taken over Hard Metals Ltd., formed in 1947 and concerned
with the manufacture of tungsten carbide bits, and also Bort Products
Manufacturing Company Ltd., both of which remain subsidiary companies.
The London Bort Products company was liquidated and the Diamond
Development Company found new sources of income in the assortment and
valuation of various 'outside productions', eventually sold to the
Diamond Corporation.
From
the standpoint of the diamond industry, it had found, on the eve of the
war, an extended use for products which had hitherto been a burden to
it; from the standpoint of the Western Powers, presently to be engaged
in a life and death struggle against the forces of evil, an
indispenable instrument of war had been forged. It was no wonder that
Ernest Oppenheimer should be appreciative of the work done by the
Diamond Development Company: 'You have done wonderful work in the
industrial field', he wrote to A. E. White in May 1944. 'My thanks and
congratulations.' But the research work which he had initiated in
Johannesburg, and the practical applications due to the co-operation of
Anglo American Corporation and New Consolidated Gold Fields meant also
that a permanent new market for industrials was found on the Rand, the
Copperbelt and the Orange Free State mining field.
♦ III ♦
The
outbreak of the war revolutionized the situation of the diamond
industry. From the very beginning the British authorities had to take
measures to deny the enemy supplies of industrials: this was not
altogether easy so long as the Germans had not invaded Holland and
Belgium, then still neutral countries. When Holland, Belgium and France
fell into enemy hands, the main cutting centres of Europe were closed,
and the progressive destruction of the Jewish element among both
workmen and employers boded ill for the future of these centres. South
Africa, the United States, Palestine and even the United Kingdom thus
became more important as cutting centres; but as the war
