GOLD FROM SAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21215, 22 December 1930, Page 9

GOLD FROM SAND

A GERMAN’S CLAIMS. OPERATIONS END IN ARREST. . i (United Press Association.) • (By Electric Telegraph—-Copyright.) DUSSELDORF, December 19. The trial has begun of Heinrich Kurschildgen, otherwise known as the “ Gold Maker of Hilden,” who, using a shed for a laboratory, asserted his ability to make enough gold from sand to defray the entire German reparations. He convinced a Cologne professor and a chemist that he had devised a machine which could destroy the atom and thereby produce gold. A lawyer subscribed £IOOO and an industrialist £2500, while other smaller sums were also advanced to finance the invention. An Anglo-American syndicate negotiated with Kurschildgen, who proceeded to London and lived in A good hotel at their expense. A Swiss merchant maintained him in Switzerland at a salary of £IOOO a year. An English member of the syndicate wired him from Paris saying that an advantageous contract had been concluded for the large-scale manufacture of gold. He then took passage by aeroplane for Hilden, where he found that Kurschildgen had been arrested. FOUND GUILTY OF FRAUD. LONDON, December 20. (Received Dec. 21, at 5.5 p.m.) Kurschildgen was found guilty of fraud, on 15 counts, and was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.