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The Diamond Cartel

The discoveries of 1870-71 in South Africa led to a great number of prospectors staking out claims and securing the diamonds by open-pit or quarry mining. The damage caused by floods and mudslides, unavoidable when there were so many different claims, was an important factor in the series of amalgamations carried on by Cecil Rhodes and Barnett Barnato. Rhodes brought about the merging of their interests in the De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., which established (1889) an effective monopoly over the diamond industry. Loss of diamonds by theft was reduced through the passage of the so-called I.D.B. (Illicit Diamond Buying) Act, which limited the trade to licensed buyers and imposed penalties for the possession of uncut stones without a license. Thefts were further curtailed by the institution of compounds in which the workers live while employed by the company and which they leave only after being thoroughly searched.

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Natural Occurrence and Processing

Diamonds are found in alluvial (loose earthy material deposited by running water) formations and in volcanic pipes, filled for most of their length with blue ground or kimberlite, an igneous rock consisting largely of serpentine. At the surface the blue ground is weathered to a clay called yellow ground. Diamantiferous (or diamondiferous), or diamond-yielding, earth is mined both by the open-pit method and by underground mining. After being removed to the surface, it is crushed and then concentrated. Sorting is done by passing the concentrated material in a stream of water over greased tables. The diamond, being largely water repellent, sticks to the grease, but the other minerals retain a film of water, which prevents them from adhering to the grease. The diamonds are then removed from the grease, cleaned, and graded for sale.

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Fashion High and Low

Sumptuary laws ensured that clothes reflected the age's social stratifications, with more variation occurring in the top ranks of society. Men as well as women were especially aware of the manipulative potentialities in dress and public image, and adorned themselves accordingly, but few did so with such notoriety and effect as Elizabeth I of England. Her astonishing wardrobe was a political expression in its own right, and a useful expedient: because much of her power came from projection—which was especially necessary when she witnessed no small number of threats to her throne, as well as limited funds in her treasury—her gowns were designed to impress with jewels and luxurious fabric, and could even be adapted to international fashion styles, depending on whose court—the French, an Italian city-state—she considered diplomatically useful at any one time. Elizabeth's dress in turn trickled down, at least to ladies of the more elevated class, with its status-enhancing ruffles, complicated bell-shaped sleeves, daunting underpinnings, heavily embroidered gowns, V-shaped waistlines, cinched, tight-fitting bodices, and choices of colors that ranged, in contemporary language, from Bristol Red to Puke and Popinjay Green.

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Shutter and film transport system

The shutter assembly and film transport system are manufactured on a separate assembly line. These parts are largely mechanical although the film transport system has electronics to read the speed of the film. DX film coding appears as silver bands on the roll of film, and these are detected by multiple contacts in the film chamber. More advanced cameras have microchips that see the data imprinted in the silver bands and adjust shutter speed, flash, and other camera actions. Again, all parts are precisely made; the film magazine size must be accurate to 60 thousandths of an inch.

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The Diamond Cartel

Most of the major diamond producers belong to, or have cooperated with, the De Beers-led marketing cartel, formed to maintain the price of diamonds at a high level. De Beers, under Harry Oppenheimer's leadership (1957-84), maintained its dominant position in the industry by using its numerous worldwide companies to buy up new sources of diamonds and to control distribution of industrial diamonds and production of synthetic ones. In the last decades of the 20th cent., however, De Beers' hold over the unpolished diamond market decreased, and in 2000 the company announced it would end to its policy of controlling diamond prices through hoarding and shift its focus to increasing sales.