Late in the 18th century, copper miners in Kazakhstan thought they found an emerald deposit of their dreams. They found fantastic cavities in quartz veins in a limestone, filled with thousands of lustrous emerald-green transparent crystals. The crystals were dispatched to Moscow, Russia for analysis. However the mineral's inferior hardness of 5 compared with emerald's greater hardness of 8 easily distinguished it.
Later Fr. René Just Haüy (the famed French mineralogist) in 1797 determined that the enigmatic Kazakhstani mineral was new to science and named it dioptase (Greek, dia, "through" and optima, "vision"), alluding to the mineral's two cleavage directions that are visible inside unbroken crystals.
This specimen of mine was obtained through a neighbourhood store at a price so low that its literally a steal!
This specimen of mine was obtained through a neighbourhood store at a price so low that its literally a steal!
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