The most famous crossing of the Alps belongs to Hannibal Barca and his army. The Carthaginian warlord lost all his elephants and one third of his warriors for good during the campaign. Alexander Suvorov's second most popular assault on the Swiss peaks came from Northern Italy, losing more than four thousand men dead and wounded. All this might not have happened had the events unfolded in the present day, when the Alps are pierced by an extensive network of tunnels. The first passage through the mountain range was started 150 years ago. It was the Mont-Senis railway tunnel, designed to link Italy and France. However, the thirteen-kilometre-long road, which runs entirely through the ridge, could have been left unfinished if an ordinary Swiss watchmaker had not intervened.
The tunnel was started on the Italian side. The best specialists in the country were called in, and the engineer Germain Sommeier, who had already built the Torino-Genoa railway, was appointed to supervise the work. The main problem faced by the developers at the time was the difficulty of crushing hard rock. By the end of the 19th century there was no efficient drilling technology capable of carrying out such work quickly. The core tools were steel drills, which would break down within an hour because of the high hardness of the rock.
The developers originally estimated that the tunnel would take almost thirty years to dig. The process was almost halved thanks to several innovations. Firstly, Sommeier himself suggested an improved version of the jackhammer used to break up materials that were not very hard. Then dynamite, invented by Alfred Nobel, was added to the possibilities to increase the rate of penetration. The gunpowder charges previously used were not much safer to install.
The key innovation in the construction, however, was the proposal by engineer Georg Loschet. A Swiss national who had spent his whole life assembling watch movements, he was brought in to Mont-Sainy as a consultant for rock-drilling, as he had a relevant mining background. Experienced in the use of stones such as sapphire, corundum and diamond in watches, and aware of their high resistance to wear, he suggested reinforcing drilling tools with diamonds. According to one version, the idea was born when Loché looked out the window at the Alps and imagined himself cutting through the mountains. On reflection, he made an imaginary cut in the air, caught the glass with the back of his hand and saw that it left a diamond ring mark.
The inventor had to spend a long time proving to the management the feasibility of using such an expensive material for drilling. Eventually the investors agreed and about a hundred carats of diamonds were purchased for the new machines. The crowns coated with the precious stones endured 24 hours of continuous work. This is how the world's first diamond drill was created. Being very heavy it was powered by a steam engine. Because of the tremendous amount of dust that was generated during the process itself, it had to be fitted with an additional mechanism that pumped water to the spot where the rock was cut. As a result the speed and productivity of the work increased tenfold and the tunnel was completed in record time.
After experiments carried out in the Alps, diamond technology began to actively develop and improve. In Russia, the fine-diamond crown was developed twenty-eight years later and began to be used in the exploration of coal deposits. You can see what one of the first domestic installations with diamond spraying looked like in the Mining Museum in St. Petersburg.
In the collection devoted to mining and mining technology is a diamond drill from the Bobrovsky system, made in the late 19th century and made of steel, brass
and bronze.
In order to reduce the cost of such plants, research began to be carried out into the creation of artificial stones capable of being an analogue for the hardest minerals on the planet. The year of their birth is 1953. Since then "precious" drilling has been available in all types of construction. Nowadays, however, natural stones are still in use. Today only 20 % of mined diamonds are used to make jewellery. The remaining 80 %, or about 100 million carats, are used for industry.
Translated by Diego Monterrey, for Northwest Forpost.
