Jan Asplund

China is a major player in all fields of diamonds, both as a producer of synthetic diamonds for both industrial and jewellery purposes and is a large consumer of diamondjewellery.
The Chinese interrest in diamonds goes back to the time when man first discovered the stone.

The knowledge on diamonds were quite limited during antiquity in Europe. No hisorical or archeological proof exists that the ancient Greeks knew about diamonds and the traces from roman times are very few. Still there were an awareness about diamonds already 500 years BCE.

After taking over Von Platens equipment and ideas on the possibilities to create diamonds synthetically the ASEA team makes slow progress until the breakthrough experiment n February 1953. After the success in crating the worlds first synthetic diamonds ASEA goes into a joint venture with DeBeers and synthetic diamonds are produced in Sweden continuously until spring 2016 when the old factory in Robertsfors is closed down and production moved to Southafrica and Ireland.

Authenticity and integrity of digital information have been discussed extensively within the record  management  and  archival  sectors  for  several  decades. The on-going  projects  and research in the area have resulted in an understanding of the potential problems when it comes to  keeping  authenticity in digital  information. In recent years the blockchain technologies have  gained attention as a potential solution  to  many  of  the  problems  associated  with management  and  storage  of  digital records. The  area  of  information  security is getting more and  more  focused on preventing  manipulation  of  existing  data. The  conclusions here is  that blockchain technologies have potential to solve several problems associated with the management and  storage of  digital  records. The  archival  sector  can  benefit  from  the  use  of blockchains to prevent time consuming and expensive work efforts to re-establish authenticity in digital information ones lost.

During  the  last  decades  there  have  been  many  projects  focusing  on  the  challenges  of  long  term  storage of the large amounts of digital information generated in the modern society .  There is  an  increasing  demand  for  media  suitable  for  long  term  storage  of  information  and  several  research  projects  are  working  with  various  method s  and  technologies for storage  of  information  for  various  purposes .  The research  area  focu sed  on using  NV  centers  in  Typ  Ib  diamonds  have  presented  progress  and  there  are  a  technique  for  both  writing  and  reading  information stored by the manipulation of NV centers by the use of red and green lasers.  The  technique  works  but  shows  a  few  weaknesses  such  as  the  NV  centers  are  changing  charge  after  the  information  having been  scanned  and  read  multiple times  and  that  by  today’s  standards the writing process taking one millisecond per pixel is relatively slow. Research is  going  on  and  other  types  of  lasers  have  shown  to  be  faster  for  writing  but  increasing  the  changing  of  NV  centers.  It  is  possible  the  technique  will  be  used  in  the  future  but  there  is  more research needed.

The first use of diamonds was as polishing powder for axes made out of hard corundum containing rocks and are from around 2500 BCE. It took almost 2000 years before organised mining of diamonds occured (in India), another 500 before some basic understanding of diamond properties resulted in the making of tools for carving and eventually for use in jewellery. Slowly increased understanding of diamond properties and the use of diamonds in jewellery resulted in blooming diamond cutting industries in Europe, first in Venice, Brugge, Lisabon and eventually Antwerp.

Vissa blå safirer har så hög halt krom att de fluorecerar rött under UV-ljus och då de belyses med blå laser vilket medför en risk att avfärda naturliga obehandlade blå safirer som glasfyllda safirer eller något annat betydligt mindre värdefullt material som till det yttre liknar safir men som är färgat av kobolt, ett ämner som är vanlig färggivare för många mineral och även för att färga glas blått. Kobolt och krom ger liknande resultat under UV-ljus och blå laser.

Diamonds were first known in India and later in Rome from where we have both historical and archeological evidence. A bit surprising is that even though the word Diamond is from the Greek word Adamo, there is no evidence that diamonds actually were known in ancient Greece.

Published in Gemmology Today November 2016.

Overview of the history of synthetic diamond production in Sweden from the early experiments in the 1940s and the successful production 1953 until the closing of the production facilities 2016.

Published in Gems & Jewellery May/June 2015 / Volume 24/ No 3

Syntetiska diamanter blir allt vanligare på ädelstensmarknaden i takt med att fler och fler tillverkare tillkommer och processen förfinas så syntetiska diamnter hela tiden blir billigare och billigare samtidigt som kvaliteten höjs. Föredraget går igenom statistik kring produktionen och den terminologi som förordas vid försäljning av syntetiska diamanter.

A presentation on the history of pearl-fishing in Sweden and the pearl-cultivation experimentation done by Linnaeus in the 18th century.
Pearl-fishing in Sweden was banned in 1994 but for almost a millennia pearl-fishing was a very important part of the local economy for many rural area. For several centuries Sweden was a major pearl-producer and Swedish pearls are found in jewellery all over Europe. In the 18th century Linnaeus succeeded in cultivating the worlds first spherical pearls and the secrecy surrounding his success was a sign of how important the crown considered the pearl-industry.

Pearlproduction in Scandinavia from the late iron age until the mid 16th century lacks historical sources and few attempts have been made to describe the potential improtance small scale pearlfishing might have had during the medieval times for Scandianvian farmers and people who did not own land as a seasonal means for income. From the 1530s the Crown shows more interrest in the business and pearl fishing becomes an interrest for the whole nation.

A study on the misconseptions about ASEA:s annpunciation of their success in producing synthetic diamonds in the 1950s. Many newer works, both books and educational material on gemmology mentions that ASEA did not announce their production of synthetic diamonds until 1986. A statement that is obviously wrong and the reasons are discussed in this short paper written 2015.