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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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the
biggest industrial-diamond customer. It is said that about eight cents'
worth of diamonds was used up in the making of an average car (the
figure would be much higher today, since industrials have gone up in
price). To true abrasive wheels, which is necessary to the automotive
industry, the diamond is necessary. Any color of industrial diamond
might seem to be all right, but the experts know this isn't so. One
firm buys only clear brown industrial diamonds; another sparkling
grays; a certain manufacturer of first-line luxury cars, a cheap gray
stone; a certain manufacturer of a medium-priced car, a costlier stone
of the same color. One manufacturer of an inexpensive car engages a man
to supervise the purchase of diamonds because he is afraid the shop
foreman would buy for appearance rather than for industrial use. This
particular manufacturer used to spend about half a million dollars a
year in the purchase of industrial diamonds. Then he decided to try out
hard-steel substitutes, found they would not do a perfect job, and went
back to diamonds since diamonds are the hardest substance on earth. (He
should have thought of that in the first place.)
There
are, of course, many other non-military uses of the industrial diamond.
Two dramatic instances come to mind. There was the time (an April
morning in 1936) when three men were buried alive beneath 150 feet of
solid rock in the Moose River Gold Mine in Nova Scotia. Two of them
were saved—because of diamonds. Diamond-impregnated drills cut their
way through the rock, making a small shaft through which medicines,
food, and drink were piped to the tortured men below. Gold miners, of
course, will not be surprised to hear that, since gold-mining engineers
and geologists use the diamond drill. It is a hollow steel cylinder
tipped by a bit studded with diamonds. Because of the dia-
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