Carborundum
From Encyclopædia
{kahr-buh-ruhn'-duhm} Carborundum is the name given to
silicon carbide, a synthesized ABRASIVE discovered (1891) by the American chemist and inventor Edward Goodrich Acheson. Acheson was experimenting with coke and clay in an electric smelting furnace when he noticed that a layer of
crystals had formed around the coke core. When this layer was crushed and purified, the resulting
crystal grains proved to be nearly as hard as diamonds. They far surpassed all of the natural abrasives such as garnet, pumice, or hard sandstone. The new abrasive was pressed into grindstones, attached to paper or cloth, or used as a polishing powder, and its trade name, Carborundum, eventually entered the
English language as a synonym for abrasive. Like industrial-grade diamond
crystals, Carborundum is widely used in industry, although newer artificial
crystals such as Borazon have partly supplanted it.
