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FIRE IN THE EARTH
polishing. One of these was a native of Bruges known as Louis de Berquem (although he also has been called by various historians Ludwig von Berquem or Berken). His father had sent him to Paris to further his studies and there Berquem acquired a taste for experimenting with tools and mechanical instruments of various kinds.
Returning home he continued these pastimes and one day made the unexpected discovery that if two diamonds are rubbed together they tend to wear the grinding surface away to powder. That is what the Hindu lapidaries overlooked: It did not occur to them that the diamond could be re­duced to dust and that the same dust could be used to accelerate machinery which would cut diamonds at a faster rate of speed and with greater precision than the hand could.
Soon Berquem became convinced that iron wheels or disks charged with diamond powder could be used suc­cessfully for grinding diamonds. The discovery aroused much attention until the Duke of Burgundy (the famous Charles the Bold) commissioned him to fashion three large diamonds which he had obtained from travelers. Berquem did so to the satisfaction of his patron. Lapidaries still were skeptical and were content with grinding diamonds into all sorts of fantastic shapes, not realizing the instrument they had for enhancing the diamond's beauty. It was not until several years later, however, that Berquem produced what he called the "perfect cut." Later he began to train men in his workshop, and these were to drift to Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, little further progress had been made. Nearly a century passed with the only regular forms of the diamond being the diamond point and the diamond table. The for­mer consisted merely of octahedral faces ground to regular
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