Diamonds have been around for a long time and have undergone various changes. At one time, they were held to have mystical powers on account of there inability to be cut or defaced. Wouldn't it be something if people of that time period saw what we are doing to them these days? There have been many inventions made along the way to assist and benefit us. This definitely applies to diamonds as well.

It wasn't until the 14th century that people finally found out how to shape diamonds. Before then, they were either worn as talismans due to the belief in them having mystical powers or they were worn as uncut and unpolished amongst the royal people. During that century, the scaif was born.

The scaif was created by Lodewyk van Berken. This machine was made up of a disk lubricated with olive oil that was imbedded with diamond dust. The rough diamond was held by a ?dop? against the disk as the diamond dust ground the stone creating flat reflective facets and producing a more brilliant gem. This invention only encouraged others to find a more effective way of creating the perfect diamond.

Although there was a rising demand of cut diamonds since this invention, there were no new innovations made until the 20th century. This innovation is called the Diamond Saw. This invention made it possible to cut against the grain of a diamond without destroying it. It also allowed cutters to correct sub-par cuts or irregularly shaped stones.

Unfortunately, this idea was more costly than cleaving. To saw a carat of diamonds, it required 1/10th carat of diamond dust and it took a considerably longer amount of time to cut through a diamond than cleaving (it took days to saw through a 2 carat stone).

However, the biggest advancement in diamond cutting was made by a 21 year old young man by the Marcel Tolkowsky. In 1919, he published a 104 page book called Diamond Design that proved on paper what many cutters were attempting for years through trial and error. In Diamond Design, he explained his formula for maximizing the refracted light while minimizing the amount of sacrificed light.

Now that cutting diamonds could be described in a mathematical format, semi-automatic machines were developed to do the job of the polishers, and that is just what DeBeers did in the 1960's. These machines still required trained workers to oversee the process, but they could be trained to operate these machines in months rather than years.