The idea of creating a man-made diamond is a very appealing one—a kind of alchemy (the process of turning base metal into gold), but one that is, remarkably, achievable. Synthetic diamonds actually come in two kinds—simulant (which are diamond-like in looks and structure) and synthetic, where the chemical structure of the stone is also the same. The latter is a "true" synthetic diamond.
Simulant diamonds made from silicon carbide were first discovered by Henri Moissan in a meteorite crater in 1893.They were later reproduced by him and others in the lab, most fampusly Willard Hersey, whose diamond can still be seen at the McPherson Museum in Kansas. It was not until 1953, however, when a team led by Baltzar von Platen (1898-1984), working in secret for the Swedish electrical company ASEA, actually succeeded in generating sufficient heat and pressure to create the first synthetic diamond. Their machine generated 83,000 atmospheres of pressure and ran for two hours. Initially, it was so dangerous that von Platen ordered all nonessential personnel from the room when the machine was switched on.
The discovery was kept secret for fear of competitors stealing their methods, and it was a team working separately for General Electric a year later that first publicly claimed to have created a synthetic diamond. Commercial production followed and man- made diamonds have since found a wealth of uses. In addition to jewelry, they are used as hard edges on cutting tools and have various uses in electronics on complex machinery such as particle accelerators and precision measurement devices.
