SYNTHETIC GOLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18464, 27 January 1922, Page 5

SYNTHETIC GOLD

‘ A PROFESSOR MISLED. THE INVENTOR A FRAUD. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, January 24. According to the Daily Chronicle’s Berlin correspondent Professor Irving Usher came to Germany, to meet the inventor of a process for producing synthetic gold. A distinguished German chemist assured Professor Fisher that the inventor was a fraud with a criminal record. Professor Fisher therefore dropped the investigation. —A. and N.Z. Cable. [Professor Irving Fisher, lecturing at the London School of Economics on December 15, suggested' that there was a serious possibility that German chemistry might devise ,a method of manufacturing gold in the laboratory for the payment of indemnities. Ho had been informed that a German chemist had already succeeded' in making synthetic gold from baser metals by means of an electric vacuum furnace. It only remained for cheaper production sufficiently to flood the world with chemical gold to make the reparations a' farce. Germany, instead of paying the penalty, would get enormously rich by exploiting the New Philosopher’s Stone. The Allies ought -to have fixed Germany’s payments in kind. Subsequent reports both from Paris and Melbourne stated that the alleged new process was regarded with scepticism in scientific circles.] ..