Diamonds Face A Laboratory-Grown Future But De Beers Will Retain Control – by Tim Treadgold (Fobes Magazine – September 28, 2018)

https://www.forbes.com/

Bookstores, cab drivers and newspaper publishers have all felt the lash of new technologies so it really isn’t a surprise that diamond mining, an industry which has long reveled in a claim to be selling something which lasts”forever” is being confronted by a technical equal but cheaper rival; man-made gems.

It also shouldn’t come as a surprise, just as it has in other industries, that the slow burn associated with a new product suddenly reaches a point of mass acceptance which is precisely what’s happening with diamonds grown in a laboratory which an eating into the market for diamonds mined in a way which hasn’t changed for hundreds of years.

Early attempts to produce diamonds of gem quality invariably produced poor imitations but three significant events have combined to deliver the same sort of revolution which has changed other industries.

The most obvious development is the technology to produce near-flawless gems that the human eye, whether professionally trained or not, struggles to tell the difference between what is, after all the promotional hyperbole is swept away, a collection carbon atoms arrange in a way that beautifully reflects light.

They Said E-Books Would Never Catch On

The technical breakthrough was stiffly resisted by the entrenched diamond industry in much the same way bookstores tried to argue that electronic books would never catch on — a classic example of famous last words if ever there was.

For the rest of this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timtreadgold/2018/09/28/diamonds-face-a-laboratory-grown-future-but-de-beers-will-retain-control/#1668a06f57ea