A fine faceted synthetic Amethyst specimen

Before the Second World War Brazil supplied the world with quartz crystals that were needed to make the oscillators used to control radio frequency. The crystals were required to be free from Brazil twinning and a process was set up to identify the untwinned crystals and ship them to the world. During the war the demand for these crystals skyrocketed and in the US alone thousands of tons of quartz were used to create oscillator plates. Because quartz was a necessity for the war effort the US government started a program to synthesize quartz that would produce untwinned crystals. It did not become successful until the 1950’s but was still critical in the mass production of radios, clocks, watches and other electrical equipment. The development of synthetic quartz led the way for coloured synthetic quartz, but due to the abundance of natural amethyst there did not seem to be much need to produce it. During the 1970’s however the Russians and later the Japanese started manufacturing their own. Although it could be produced in very large quantities it was not and existing specimens like this are quite rare to find.