Edward Goodrich AchesonBorn 9 Mar 1856; died 6 Jul 1931 at age 75.American inventor who discovered the abrasive carborundum, the second hardest substance (next to diamonds) and later perfected a method for making graphite. In his early career, he had worked at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park (1880-84), but left to become an independent inventor. In 1891, he was experimenting with an electric furnace, trying to make diamonds from a molten mixture of powdered coke and clay. Instead of diamonds, he found he had made small, gritty, hard crystals almost as hard as diamonds. He determined that this crystalline substance was silicon carbide. It was very effective as an abrasive, which Acheson patented(28 Feb 1892) and called “carborundum.” Heestablished the Carborundum Company (1894), to make grinding wheels, whet stones, and powdered abrasives.« |
