Synthetic Quartz (Motorola Laboratories & Skip Colflesh Coll.)

Item Description

A wondrous large synthetic, lab-made gem quartz crystal used for the telecommunications industry. This important technology was developed by Bell Labs of New Jersey during the late 1940s to 1956, when production began. The technolgy was later used by Motorola for the same purposes. The water-clear gem crystal has frosted faces all-around, except for a few unusual modified water-clear corners. Metal pins at the ends held the natural quartz seed plate used to start the crystal and connect it to electrodes. The lightly dinged corner on one end is certainly only a modest detraction. The piece was acquired by Skip Colflesh who was on a field trip while attending Penn State University as a geology student to the Motorola Plant in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mass is 84 grams. We found a few more pieces of this RARE material stashed away.