5 ms·

They never had any value, apart from specialized ie glass cutting tool. Only when DeBeers realized they could push some fictious heavy marketing 'to prove your

by jajko 2y ago

They never had any value, apart from specialized ie glass cutting tool. Only when DeBeers realized they could push some fictious heavy marketing 'to prove your worth to woman you are asking to marry' for those shiny stones nobody wanted to buy, people who didn't know better got manipulated into buying them. They are supposedly very common in universe, and probably in deeper Earth too. Correction is healthy and benefits mankind long term, there was nothing good coming from ie impact on Africa. Nobody cared about that, so things are fixed from another direction.

RandomLensman 2y ago
Diamonds where valued before DeBeers even existed, but diamonds in engagement rings (especially in the US) are (at least partially) from a heavy marketing push by them in the 20th century. Previously engagement rings tended to be colored gemstones.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Yes, I've read that in the early 20th century, other precious gemstones (like rubies & emeralds) had more than a third of the market for engagement rings.
tonetegeatinst 2y ago
I think diamonds are used in some lathes as cutting tools. So suprising thats not more common. I though diamonds strength and iirc its heat tolerance would be attractive to the folks who cut stuff.
- folmar 2y ago
  The hardness is attractive but the poor heat resistance is a major problem for many uses. For a normal angle grinder you can use normal abrasive disc without paying much attention, but with a diamond-grit one you can easily burn the diamonds.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  Diamonds are excellent for cutting some materials, e.g. ceramics or some non-ferrous alloys, but they are bad for cutting metals that are good at dissolving carbon, e.g. iron, cobalt and nickel alloys. So for the iron alloys, which are the material most frequently processed by machining, diamond is not suitable. Other hard crystals, like alumina a.k.a. corundum, are much better for this purpose, even if they are less hard than diamond.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    For those metals, cubic boron nitride works and has about half the Knoop hardness of diamond (and more than twice the hardness of aluminum oxide.) c-BN is isoelectronic with diamond; h-BN is isoelectronic with graphite (but is an insulator).
- avhon1 2y ago
  Diamond turning is used to produce optical surfaces with lathes. Here's a recent example on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTFFPLOzCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTFFPLOzCw
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  They're not that heat tolerant. They're fantastic heat conductors, but they'll burn away into carbon dioxide (via carbon monoxide). The temperatures needed to do that are high, around 900C, but that's not that high. Angle grinder sparks can be hotter than 1000C, as can the edges of carbide tools.
darby_nine 2y ago
There's no market for e.g. diamond lenses? Sure it's going to be on the expensive end of the market but the same forces are pushing those prices down.
thehappypm 2y ago
Diamonds certainly have value as a material for jewelry -- essentially unscratchable jewelry is pretty awesome. They also don't get cloudy over time or anything. That's the cool part.
- cma 2y ago
  They can be burned up in a house fire though.
  - modderation 2y ago
    Who needs a house fire? A bit of quartz glass, a blow torch, and an oxygen supply, and you can convert your unused diamonds into carbon dioxide without losing the house* Nile Red uses this approach to make Diamond Water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw * You might still lose the house if you opt for the bigger diamonds.
ipsento606 2y ago
> Who does not love diamonds? Where is there a mind in > which the bare mention of them does not excite a > pleasant emotion? Is there any one of rank too exalted > to care for such baubles? The highest potentates of the > earth esteem them as their choicest treasures, and > kingdoms have been at war for their possession From "Diamonds" by William Pole, published in 1861 [1] (27 years before the formation of the De Beers company) [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diamonds/ENwOAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=diamonds&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diamonds/ENwOAAAAYAAJ?h...
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The Europeans have encountered for the first time what are now called diamonds during the expedition of Alexander the Great in India, where they had been appreciated for jewelry for a long time. This is why the Romans, e.g. Pliny the Elder, used for diamonds the name "Indian adamant". The name "adamant" without the "Indian" specifier had already been used for many hundreds of years (the oldest attestation is in Hesiod), but it had not been applied to a gem, but to nuggets of native osmium-iridium alloy, which can be found mixed with the nuggets of native gold in the alluvial deposits of gold (and which, unlike the gold with which they were mixed, could be neither melted nor forged, hence their name, "untameable"; "unconquerable", which is used in the article is a bad translation for "adamant"). Pliny the Elder described the "Indian adamant" as consisting of octahedral crystals, which is the most frequent form of the natural diamonds. It appears that at that time it was impossible to cut the diamonds, at most they might have been polished a little, so the crystals used in jewelry retained their native shape. By the time of Pliny the Elder, the "Indian adamant" was the most expensive gem, surpassing even the noble opals, the pearls, the emeralds and the beryls, which were the next most expensive gems at that time. The Romans did not care much for transparent crystals, they appreciated much more the higher quality exemplars of noble opals or pearls, if those exhibited a nice play of colors.
khazhoux 2y ago
> They never had any value The Crown Jewels disagree with you https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-crown-jewels/#gs.evxbai https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/t...
murukesh_s 2y ago
>They never had any value They had immense value in ancient world. They were valued much more than gold - due to their rarity. Southern India was the only known source for mining diamonds in ancient world [1]. They were used as currency and was valued higher than gold. In fact there were wars fought for diamonds. There is a saying about Koh-i-Noor, one of the most famous Diamond - "If a strong man were to throw four stones – one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air – and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_diamonds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_diamonds [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/koh-i-noor-diamond-britain-illegally-india-pakistan-afghanistan-history-tower https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/koh-i-...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mr_toad 2y ago
  Good quality sapphires, rubies and emeralds are rarer and in some parts of history were considered more valuable. They’re not hyped to the extent that diamonds have been in the last 100 years.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  The 5 stone gold comparison is utter BS (unless those 5 stones are like 5 stones heavy :P). All the gold available to humans on earth right now fits into a ~20m cube, and that is most certainly worth orders of magnitude more than a single diamond in a historical artifact.
  - murukesh_s 2y ago
    Not at that time when the diamonds were mined only from one mine in the entire world for several hundreds of thousands of years.
Ekaros 2y ago
Anything rare does have value. So why not big enough diamonds. With big being critical part. The tiny stuff really is very stuff. The big is rare and thus rarity along reasonably brings some value.
Vox_Leone 2y ago
>>They never had any value As they say, "If you want to know a diamond's worth, try selling one"

by jajko 2y ago

RandomLensman 2y ago

Diamonds where valued before DeBeers even existed, but diamonds in engagement rings (especially in the US) are (at least partially) from a heavy marketing push by them in the 20th century. Previously engagement rings tended to be colored gemstones.

euroderf 2y ago
Yes, I've read that in the early 20th century, other precious gemstones (like rubies & emeralds) had more than a third of the market for engagement rings.

tonetegeatinst 2y ago

I think diamonds are used in some lathes as cutting tools. So suprising thats not more common. I though diamonds strength and iirc its heat tolerance would be attractive to the folks who cut stuff.

folmar 2y ago
The hardness is attractive but the poor heat resistance is a major problem for many uses. For a normal angle grinder you can use normal abrasive disc without paying much attention, but with a diamond-grit one you can easily burn the diamonds.
adrian_b 2y ago
Diamonds are excellent for cutting some materials, e.g. ceramics or some non-ferrous alloys, but they are bad for cutting metals that are good at dissolving carbon, e.g. iron, cobalt and nickel alloys. So for the iron alloys, which are the material most frequently processed by machining, diamond is not suitable. Other hard crystals, like alumina a.k.a. corundum, are much better for this purpose, even if they are less hard than diamond.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  For those metals, cubic boron nitride works and has about half the Knoop hardness of diamond (and more than twice the hardness of aluminum oxide.) c-BN is isoelectronic with diamond; h-BN is isoelectronic with graphite (but is an insulator).
avhon1 2y ago
Diamond turning is used to produce optical surfaces with lathes. Here's a recent example on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTFFPLOzCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTFFPLOzCw
grues-dinner 2y ago
They're not that heat tolerant. They're fantastic heat conductors, but they'll burn away into carbon dioxide (via carbon monoxide). The temperatures needed to do that are high, around 900C, but that's not that high. Angle grinder sparks can be hotter than 1000C, as can the edges of carbide tools.

darby_nine 2y ago

There's no market for e.g. diamond lenses? Sure it's going to be on the expensive end of the market but the same forces are pushing those prices down.

thehappypm 2y ago

Diamonds certainly have value as a material for jewelry -- essentially unscratchable jewelry is pretty awesome. They also don't get cloudy over time or anything. That's the cool part.

cma 2y ago
They can be burned up in a house fire though.
- modderation 2y ago
  Who needs a house fire? A bit of quartz glass, a blow torch, and an oxygen supply, and you can convert your unused diamonds into carbon dioxide without losing the house* Nile Red uses this approach to make Diamond Water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw * You might still lose the house if you opt for the bigger diamonds.

ipsento606 2y ago

> Who does not love diamonds? Where is there a mind in > which the bare mention of them does not excite a > pleasant emotion? Is there any one of rank too exalted > to care for such baubles? The highest potentates of the > earth esteem them as their choicest treasures, and > kingdoms have been at war for their possession From "Diamonds" by William Pole, published in 1861 [1] (27 years before the formation of the De Beers company) [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diamonds/ENwOAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=diamonds&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diamonds/ENwOAAAAYAAJ?h...

adrian_b 2y ago
The Europeans have encountered for the first time what are now called diamonds during the expedition of Alexander the Great in India, where they had been appreciated for jewelry for a long time. This is why the Romans, e.g. Pliny the Elder, used for diamonds the name "Indian adamant". The name "adamant" without the "Indian" specifier had already been used for many hundreds of years (the oldest attestation is in Hesiod), but it had not been applied to a gem, but to nuggets of native osmium-iridium alloy, which can be found mixed with the nuggets of native gold in the alluvial deposits of gold (and which, unlike the gold with which they were mixed, could be neither melted nor forged, hence their name, "untameable"; "unconquerable", which is used in the article is a bad translation for "adamant"). Pliny the Elder described the "Indian adamant" as consisting of octahedral crystals, which is the most frequent form of the natural diamonds. It appears that at that time it was impossible to cut the diamonds, at most they might have been polished a little, so the crystals used in jewelry retained their native shape. By the time of Pliny the Elder, the "Indian adamant" was the most expensive gem, surpassing even the noble opals, the pearls, the emeralds and the beryls, which were the next most expensive gems at that time. The Romans did not care much for transparent crystals, they appreciated much more the higher quality exemplars of noble opals or pearls, if those exhibited a nice play of colors.

khazhoux 2y ago

> They never had any value The Crown Jewels disagree with you https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-crown-jewels/#gs.evxbai https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/t...

murukesh_s 2y ago

>They never had any value They had immense value in ancient world. They were valued much more than gold - due to their rarity. Southern India was the only known source for mining diamonds in ancient world [1]. They were used as currency and was valued higher than gold. In fact there were wars fought for diamonds. There is a saying about Koh-i-Noor, one of the most famous Diamond - "If a strong man were to throw four stones – one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air – and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_diamonds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_diamonds [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/koh-i-noor-diamond-britain-illegally-india-pakistan-afghanistan-history-tower https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/koh-i-...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mr_toad 2y ago
Good quality sapphires, rubies and emeralds are rarer and in some parts of history were considered more valuable. They’re not hyped to the extent that diamonds have been in the last 100 years.
myrmidon 2y ago
The 5 stone gold comparison is utter BS (unless those 5 stones are like 5 stones heavy :P). All the gold available to humans on earth right now fits into a ~20m cube, and that is most certainly worth orders of magnitude more than a single diamond in a historical artifact.
- murukesh_s 2y ago
  Not at that time when the diamonds were mined only from one mine in the entire world for several hundreds of thousands of years.

Ekaros 2y ago

Anything rare does have value. So why not big enough diamonds. With big being critical part. The tiny stuff really is very stuff. The big is rare and thus rarity along reasonably brings some value.

Vox_Leone 2y ago

>>They never had any value As they say, "If you want to know a diamond's worth, try selling one"