AMERICA'S AMAZING ALCHEMIST
by Vincent H. Gaddis
Did Dr. Stephen H. Emmens find the key to the
dreams of the medieval alchemists, or was he a clever imposter?
The question remains unanswered. But there is no doubt that he
did produce gold from some source which he sold to the United
States Mint. Moreover, another scientist, by following his
instructions, attained partial success. Dr. Emmens, however, like
the fabulous sorcerers of legend, carried to the grave his
fundamental secrets.
If Dr. Emmens was truly a modern Rosicrucian, the re-discovery of
his methods may threaten the gold standards of world markets. On
the other hand, if he was a fraud, his scheme of disposing of
gold was probably the most ingenious ever devised. The facts in
the story, however, indicate that Emmens did find a way for
artificially increasing the gold content of coined silver.
First, Emmens was a scientist whose discoveries cannot be lightly
dismissed. His name ranks high in the development of explosives;
and he invented "Emmensite," a high-explosive
officially accepted by the U.S. government. He was a member of
the U.S. Board of Ordnance, the American Chemical Society, the
American Institute of Mining Engineers, the U.S. Naval Institute,
and the U.S. Military Service Institute. His reputation as a
chemist was international in the scientific world. He was the
author of a number of books on a wide variety of topics.
Second, when the famous English physicist, Sir William Crookes,
duplicated the Emmens experiment, he succeeded in gaining a gold
content in silver amounting to almost 27 percent.
Dr. Emmens, a large, well-built man with a
walrus mustache, started his experiments about the year 1895.
While making some geological studies, he noticed a curious fact
— that gold is found in greenstone that has made its way
from the interior of the earth under conditions permitting very
slow cooling. He also observed that gold is not found in ordinary
lava flows where the heat has been quickly dissipated. Since lava
and greenstone are composed of similar elements, he decided that
"a non-auriferous limestone, subjected to the same natural
laboratory treatment as an auriferous greenstone, is capable of
producing gold by the transmutation of some of its own
constituent particles."
Likewise, Dr. Emmens believed that a relationship existed between
gold and silver, since both were geologically associated with
each other. He suggested that in the course of natural chemical
evolution silver becomes transmuted into gold, or gold into
silver, "or that some third substance exists which changes
partly into gold and partly into silver." This third
immediate substance he called "argentaurum."
Experiments were started in his New York laboratory. Several
years later Dr. Emmens claimed to have produced argentaurum by a
method which he kept secret, although he revealed the general
principles involved in the process. He used as his material
Mexican silver dollars, certified by the U.S. Mint as containing
less than one part in ten thousand of gold. First, there was a
mechanical treatment. The silver was subjected to continuous
hammering at very low temperatures in a special cylinder. He
called the apparatus a "force=engine," and it seems to
have a combination riveter and hydraulic press. A special
arrangement rapidly carried away the heat generated by the
hammering.
Next, there was a process of fluxing and granulation. This
action, Dr. Emmens wrote, rendered the "molecular aggregates
susceptible of displacement and rearrangement." The
mechanical treatment was again applied to the silver, followed by
a chemical process in which modified nitric acid was used. The
final step was refining. It was necessary that the silver contain
at least a trace of gold, and the Emmens process served to
increase this gold content.
In 1897 Dr. Emmens started selling his gold to the U.S. Mint.
Official figures for the amounts of "argentaurum gold"
purchased by the assay office in 1897 reveal a fineness of gold
ranging from .305 to .751. A year later the content varied from
.313 to .997 — the latter being almost pure gold. It is
obvious that the results of the process were not consistent. The
ingots contained an alloy of silver and gold, with occasional
traces of other metals.
Public knowledge of this modern alchemy did not come until early
in 1899 when the New York Herald printed a feature article on the
Emmens discovery. A storm of discussion and controversy
immediately followed. James Gordon Bennett, the publisher, issued
a challenge to Emmens to present a demonstration of his process
before a committee of scientists.The inventor immediately
accepted. However, the famous publisher found it impossible to
form a committee. He invited a number of scientific experts,
including Nikola Tesla, to witness a demonstration, but they all
refused. Again, it was found that the cost of the demonstration
would be no small matter. The expense of equipping a new
laboratory was estimated at $10,000. On the other hand, if the
experiment was made in the inventor's own laboratory, the cost
would be even greater. Emmens pointed out that the
fraud-suspecting committee would demand that one floor be torn up
and all his other equipment dismantled.As a result the New York
Herald withdrew its challenge, claiming that the conditions for a
demonstration could not be arranged. Meanwhile, Emmens quietly
continued his work of apparently manufacturing gold and selling
it to the Mint. During one nine-months period his sales of gold
to the government amounted to $8,000.
Rumors of Dr. Emmens alchemy had circulated throughout the
scientific world before it reached the public. In May, 1897, Sir
William Crookes wrote to Emmens from England inquiring about his
experiments, and their correspondence continued for about a year.
Almost from the beginning, however, the personalities of the two
men came into conflict, and their relationship ended in
bitterness and controversy.
Sir William was a scientist — placing the acquisition of
knowledge above all other considerations. But Dr. Emmens was
first an inventor, and he demanded that his work bring a
financial return. In one letter he wrote: "The
gold-producing work in our Argentaurum laboratory is a case of
pure Mammon-seeking. It is not being carried on for the sake of
science or in a proselytizing spirit. No disciples are desired,
and no believers are asked for."
Sir William questioned the theory of argentaurum as an immediate
substance between silver and gold. In reply, Dr. Emmens outlined
his general method, but he never revealed all the details of his
process. He told the English scientist to take a Mexican dollar,
and "dispose it in an apparatus which will prevent expansion
or flow. Then subject it to heavy, rapid, and continuous beatings
under conditions of cold such as to prevent even a temporary rise
of temperature when the blows are struck. Test the material from
hour to hour, and at length you will find more than the trace
(less than one part in ten thousand) of gold which the dollar
originally contained."
In duplicating the experiment, Sir William used a steel mortar
with a close-fitting piston. The piston had a weight of
twenty-eight pounds, and was raised and dropped a foot sixty
times a minute by means of a cam on a rotating shaft. The mortar
was enclosed in a coil of pipes containing liquid carbonic acid,
and immersed in solid ice. The hammering process covered a period
of forty hours. As a result the gold content of the silver was
raised from .062 to .075 — a difference of 20.9 per cent. It
should be pointed out that no chemical processing followed the
mechanical treatment.
Dr. Emmens considered this experiment a valuable independent
testimony on the truth of his theory. Without asking Crookes'
permissions, he published an account of the results, and the
English physicist never forgave him for taking this liberty. Sir
William complained bitterly that Emmens had betrayed a
confidence, and had placed an importance on the experiment that
it did not deserve.
Later Crookes made a second experiment that resulted in total
failure. In this attempt, however, the physicist used
chemically-pure silver. Emmens had previously stated that the
silver must contain at least a trace of gold in its composition
for the "force-engine" to produce more gold. But Sir
William had either forgotten this statement or regarded it as
unimportant.In March, 1898, Emmens wrote the following paragraph
in a letter to Crookes: "You have made two experiments. In
one you employed metal from a normal Mexican dollar and obtained
an increase of nearly 21 per cent in the contained gold. In the
other you employed abnormal Mexican dollars, and obtained no
gold. It seems to me that your duty is to dispassionately
announce both experiments."
But the English scientist apparently had no desire to have his
name linked with modern alchemy. Moreover, Sir William made a
second unfortunate mistake. He asked Emmens to send him "a
small piece of the gold you have made." Emmens sent him a
sample of the product he was selling to the U.S. Mint, which,
naturally did not contain "argentaurum," a substance
which Emmens considered a temporary one in his process.
However, Crookes called the sample "a specimen of
argentaurum," and published a detailed analysis of its
composition in a British scientific periodical. He pointed out
that it contained only well-known elements, and that the
spectrograph revealed "no lines belonging to any other known
element, and no unknown lines were detected."
By this time the correspondence between the two men had been
strained to the breaking point. Sir William had spent a lot of
money on his experiments, and the refusal of Emmens to go into
exact details regarding his process was an added source of
irritation. He, likewise, felt that Emmens had violated his
confidence by publishing parts of his private letters.
The inventor, on the other hand, was annoyed by the Englishman's
suspicions, and his refusal to continue or publicly report his
experiments. In May, 1898, he wrote his final letter to Crookes:
"Really, don't you think it poor sport to ride the horse of
grievance? You and I are growing old, and we may surely turn our
time to better account than in exchanging complaint and repartee
over such a trifling matter as the whether an experiment with a
bit of metal should or should not be treated as a weighty
secret?" The English scientist never replied.
A year later Emmens published a book entitled Argentaurana,
or Some Contributions to the History of Science. It
contained a general outline of his methods, together with his
correspondence on the subject with Sir William Crookes. Shortly
later he exhibited his process at the Greater Britain Exhibition.
Did Dr. Emmens actually created artificial gold which he sold to
the U.S. Mint? In one assay report of "argentaurum
gold" made by the government, it was stated that the ingots
contained impurities of a kind "constantly present in old
jewelry." In referring to this report some twenty years ago,
the British writer Lieut.-Commander Rupert T. Gould, R.N., stated
that this "was as neat a way of calling Emmens a 'fence' as
could be imagined." On the other hand, the same impurities
— traces of copper, platinum, lead, zinc and iron — are
to be found in coined Mexican dollars.
Dr. Stephen H. Emmens died shortly after the turn of the century,
and his secret died with him. No evidence of fraud has ever been
found to discredit America's only alchemist. And his mysterious
argentaurum gold, in coins and in bars buried below Fort Knox, is
now a part of the wealth that supports the monetary system of the
United States.
Copyright © 1997 Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
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