They got carborundum as
early as 1885 but miscalled it "crystallized silicon," so its
introduction was left to E.A. Acheson, who was a graduate of Edison's
laboratory. In 1891 he packed clay and charcoal into an iron bowl,
connected it to a dynamo and stuck into the mixture an electric light
carbon connected to the other pole of the dynamo. When he pulled out the
rod he found its end encrusted with glittering crystals of an unknown
substance. They were blue and black and iridescent, exceedingly hard and
very beautiful. He sold them at first by the carat at a rate that would
amount to $560 a pound. They were as well worth buying as diamond dust,
but those who purchased them must have regretted it, for much finer
crystals were soon on sale at ten cents a pound. The mysterious
substance turned out to be a compound of carbon and silicon, the
simplest possible compound, one atom of each, CSi. Acheson set up a
factory at Niagara, where he made it in ten-ton batches. The furnace
consisted simply of a brick box fifteen feet long and seven feet wide
and deep, with big carbon electrodes at the ends.
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