The Rise And Fall Of Diamonds

First, there was a problem of what economists call «opportunity costs.» Manufacturing gem diamonds required tying up the press for nearly a week. In that same period, the presses could produce batches of powdered diamonds for industrial purposes every three minutes. Even though diamond powder could be sold for roughly only one percent what gem diamonds could be sold for, it would still be far more profitable to use the press for powder rather than gems.
To

vention.
By 1970, more than half the diamonds produced in the world were man-made. Unlike prices for gem diamonds, which rose steadily during the postwar period, the

After examining this second batch of diamonds with their loupes, Sir Julius conferred with Oats in private. Oats suspected that the whole experiment was nothing more than a hoax. Sir Julius understood Oats’ doubts, but believed that there was still some chance that this French inventor had stumbled on the secret formula for diamonds.

Hannay’s crystals were rediscovered by the British Museum and, under X-ray analysis, proved to be diamonds of an extremely rare variety called «Type II.» The fact that Type II diamonds were not generally recovered from mines at the time of Hannay’s experiments indicated that he had indeed manufactured them.

problem. It required constructing a vessel strong enough to withstand the heat and pressure necessary for inducing the synthesis. In a meeting with Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, they had themselves argued that advanced metallurgic alloys and high-pressure physics made the solution of this problem inevitable. They proposed that De Beers itself take the lead in developing this

Even with the support of private armies and black governments, it was impossible for De Beers to eradicate completely native smugglers. To prevent even this trickle of gems from re

«factory» became a favored part of the official tours provided for important visitors to Sierra Leone. (Visitors who purchased «Sierra Leonean» diamonds from the factory or the retail stores in Freetown were, of course, not told the true origins of these diamonds.)

These agents then could be used to manipulate the diamond smugglers higher up in the chain. To accomplish this feat for De Beers, Sillitoe suggested that he hire a half dozen top intelligence officers from the British secret service. These men would form the nucleus of a private intelligence service for the cartel.

N.W. Ayer helped De Beers expand its sales of diamonds in the United States from a mere $23 million in 1939 to over $2 billion, at the wholesale level by 1980. In two-score years, the value of its sales had increased nearly a hundred-fold. In comparison, the expenditure on advertisements, which began at a level of only $200,000 a year and gradually increased to $10 million, seemed a prudent investment by De Beers. It had, after all, helped evolve an American diamond mind capable of absorbing the abundance of diamonds from both Africa and Siberia.

to. this point, De Beers itself had been largely responsible for reducing the market for small, under one-carat diamonds. Through its twenty-year advertising campaign, it had encouraged American women to think of the size of a diamond as a status symbol or «badge»: The larger the diamond, the more status it represented. During this period, N.W. Ayer had surreptitiously authored film scenario and news stories whic