Advent of Synthetic Diamonds Page 419



	382	SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER

	very great and were not finally solved until the years after the Second World War. On 15 February 1955, the General Electric Company of America announced the successful completion of more than four years of intensive research, 'part of a general programme for examining various materials subjected to combined high temperature and pressure'.⁵² What had so been produced were very small diamonds, not gem stones, but stones capable of use for industrial purposes, if the high original cost of making them could be reduced thus enabling commercial production to take place. Both in respect of the reduction of costs and of increasing the size of this man-made material, success (though not, in this respect, commercial success) was subsequently achieved. This achievement was a challenge to the diamond-mining industry which had at once to be faced, even though, in 1955, only the technical possibility of making diamonds had been established, and the possible economic consequences were still remote. Ernest Oppenheimer, whose belief in research has been sufficiently stressed, and through whose initiative the Diamond Research Laboratory at Johannesburg had been established, at once took action. Within a month ... Sir Ernest Oppenheimer decided that an independent effort should be made to produce synthetic diamonds in South Africa. A special laboratory building, the Adamant Research Laboratory, was established for this purpose, and the required staff was engaged or seconded from the Diamond Research Laboratory. The building was finished in October 1956.⁵³ On 16 September 1959, success was achieved .. . although it was known only the following day that it had been successful, when one of the team invited the other co-workers to have a glance through a binocular microscope as there was something of importance to be seen. The moment we looked through the instrument, we knew that diamonds ⁵² This communication to the Press was followed by the publication in its own journal by the A.S.E.A. (a Swedish concern) in the course of 1955 of an announcement that it had successfully produced synthetic diamonds as early as 15 February 1953. There is no doubt that synthetic diamonds were so produced. In recent times also, the National Physical Laboratory in England and the United States Army Signal and Research Laboratory, 'as part of a programme of seeking new electronic materials' have also produced synthetic diamonds. (U.S. Army Press release dated 7 March i960.) ⁵³ J. F. H. Custers: 'Diamond synthesis in South Africa', in supplement to Delta (thejournal of the Engineering Faculty of the University of Pretoria) issue of September i960. Dr. Custers is director of research at the Adamant Laboratory and it is to him and his colleagues that the achievement of making synthetic diamonds in South Africa is due. The project was financed by De Beers Consolidated Mines, the necessary resolution having been passed by the board of that company on 30 March 1955.