KRYSTALLOS

[Music] [Applause] [Music] eons ago our scorched earth began to cool mountains formed and in time strange minerals tempered by heat and pressure beam with the coming of man some of these took on special value like quartz crystal quartz was highly regarded by Greek artisans for it's icy brilliance believing it was some kind of frozen water they gave it the name crystal oz [Music] in her 19th century Paris laboratory Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered a strange thing about quartz they found by wiring a quartz crystal to a recording meter and striking it they could produce an electric signal squeezing it produced the same result this startling discovery gave quartz crystal a new significance today tucked inside vacuum tubes are tiny and vital crystal plates which work as ingenious electronic filters [Music] when people make long-distance phone calls their voice signals pass through individual quartz crystals the crystals vibrate giving each signal of frequency all its own now these messages mixed with many others ride a microwave beam over great distances at the receiving end they are separated again by passing through identical quartz crystals and one telephone route has done the work of many Brazil is about the only source of natural high-grade quartz which the Bell Telephone companies are using more and more each year the greater part of this natural crystal must be thrown away because of its irregular shape and flaws that show up on the crystal is sliced by the time it is finished it will exceed the cost of pure gold how to keep costs down and supply unlimited this was the challenge offered to chemists and engineers of Bell Telephone laboratories and Western Electric working together they set out to beat nature at her own game to create low-cost quartz flawless and abundant they took inexpensive quartz chips and poured them into a specially designed autoclave for chemists pressure cooker then came a solution capable of dissolving the quartz chips on top of this went a rack of tiny crystal wafers seeds on which the man-made quartz would grow [Music] [Music] locked and sealed the seeds were then put under extreme pressure and controlled temperature and left to themselves [Music] [Music] with the passing of hours in two days the scrap courts would dissolve moving up to the cooler part of the autoclave to deposit itself as a solid on the tiny seed place then the seeds would grow and grow or so the scientists hoped [Music] sometimes after days of waiting the seed plates mysteriously disappeared without a trace at other times the seeds emerged virtually unchanged or the crystals would actually grow but each one was deformed by cracks or strange bubbles it happened on occasion in these early experiments if a great pressure needed forced sudden discouraging leaks in the seal as in all research there were many disappointments but the failures pointed to one thing perfect crystals would not grow without a perfect seal by studying the results of many tries the experimenters discovered the right combination of temperature pressure and time the cracks the bubbles and the leaks were beaten at last the research job was done thousands of crystals to grow in giant autoclave this was the problem Western Electric manufacturing engineers now had to deal with the large crystals somehow would not grow like they're miniature predecessors this meant changing techniques again more trial and error another search for a perfect seal a seal to stand up against the forces of intense pressure and heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] today with the problems behind a technique is foolproof [Music] scrapp crystals are lower to the bottom of deep cylinders where they will soon dissolved but tiny quartz wafers of the early experiments are now large quartz plates each of these seed plates has been cut to form the rectangular heart of a full-grown crystal and so the crystal seeds are planted in a subterranean garden where chemistry will be their soil and light [Music] the delicate balance of heat and pressure that permits crystals to grow is scrupulously controlled [Music] growth is a slow process hours stretch into days [Music] planted seeds have yielded matchless crystal clearer more uniform the nature has brought forth in the ages of time yet only the raw material before they are ready to help carry voices to distant places they must again change their shape and size [Music] they are sliced two wafers it takes a diamond saw to do it cut to size [Music] tested electrically Brown to precision within a thousandth of an inch given an acid bath then a set of terminals and cleaned by super sonic vibration [Music] they take their final shape and are ready to go to work keeping television programs on their proper channels [Music] providing a bit of magic in everyone's telephone and bringing us a step nearer to a tomorrow when communications between more distant places even worlds will be commonplace [Music] crystal quartz created by nature recreated by man [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]