Diamond Hardness
from
Diamond Experts

The name 'diamond' is derived from the old French word 'diamant,' itself derived from the Latin and Greek word 'adamas,' meaning 'unconquerable.' From the eighth century BC, adamas was usually a name for iron or iron alloy, but it may have been intended to mean diamond when used in the second half of the first century BC.

The Roman philosopher, Pliny the Elder, wrote: These stones are tested upon the anvil, and will resist the blow to such an extent as to make the iron rebound and the very anvil split asunder.' Hence the exaggerated understanding of diamond hardness had begun.

One of the beliefs told was that diamonds were indestructible, even under the blow of a hammer. This definition for diamond hardness persisted for centuries. In the year 1476, Swiss mercenaries found diamonds belonging to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, after the battle of Morat, and struck them with hammers and hatchets to discover whether they were genuine or not. It is painful to say, but the tests left them with powdered results.

Many fine diamond crystals were broken because of the same belief regarding diamond hardness. Miners of the Indian and South African diamond mines during the fifteenth century and last quarter of the nineteenth century used the hammer to test for diamond hardness. It was said by the French jeweler and one of the first 'globe trotters', Jean Baptiste Tavernier, after he visited the Indian diamond mines in the seventeenth century, that few dealers in wholesale diamonds knew the true facts about diamond hardness. Diamond wholesalers frequently persuaded miners that the stones they found were not genuine by breaking them with a hammer, and then they picked up the pieces after the disappointed miners left.