The 1962 Owen Murphy Productions film for Bell Telephone “Krystallos” starts with close-up footage of quartz crystals, one of the most common minerals on Earth (:07), and shifts to a drawing of a watercolor painting depicting mountains and meadows (:30), before shifting to an icy blue quartz (:45). The word “crystal” is derived from the Greek word krystallos, meaning “clear ice.” The film’s narrator describes how two young French brothers, Jacques and Pierre Curie, discovered piezoelectrics in their 19th-century lab when they found that striking or squeezing quartz would produce an electric signal (1:10). In the beginning, natural quartz was mass produced for use in electronic applications. However the process was very costly, and limited supply eventually became a problem. Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric chemists and engineers had a challenge on their hands: how could they keep quartz costs down and supply unlimited? In a collaborative effort, they set out to create the first man-made quartz crystals (2:51). In 1946, after several attempts, a balance of controlled temperature, pressure, and time enabled them to grow quartz crystals from tiny crystal wafers and seeds (3:35). We see the different outcomes of the experiment in the film: sometimes the seed plates will mysteriously disappear, or emerge unchanged. At other times, even though the crystals will grow—there’d be deformities such as cracks and bubbles (04:47). By studying these early results, researchers were eventually able to create a perfect crystal (5:50). Researchers are seen lowering larger scrap crystals into the bottom of deep cylinders (6:51) and planting crystal seed plates in a subterranean garden (7:16).
Finally, after countless tests, the seeds yielded beautifully clear and uniformed crystals (8:12). Still, additional steps were needed before the raw crystals were ready for use in communication devices. They are sliced to wafers with a diamond saw (8:41), cut to size (8:51), tested electrically (8:57), grounded to precision (9:03), given an acid bath (9:11), then a set of terminals (9:12) and then cleaned by supersonic vibrations (9:15). The final shape is revealed at mark 9:30. By the 1960s, tiny quartz plates were being used as electronic filters for telephones, radios, televisions and other consumer devices. Quartz crystals are also found inside test and measurement equipment, such as counters, signal generators, and oscilloscopes. More than two billion crystals are manufactured annually (Wikipedia).
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