(This article is sponsored by The Boston Group)

Of all the elements, gold in its pure state is undoubtedly the most beautiful. It is known and highly valued since antiquity. My involvement with gold started with my post-doctoral project at Carnegie Mellon University in 1973. Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity, and this property remains unaltered even under the most severe conditions. Therefore, its use as an electronic conductor is preferred in many applications where reliability is important. Until recently, most of the computer chips used fine gold bonding wire. In many Integrated Circuits the conducting paths are printed on a ceramic substrate using a gold film. Because of its non-oxidizing nature pure gold does not adhere to the ceramic material. My project was to improve the adhesion of gold to these substrates by doping it with small quantities of selected elements. In addition to this Hi-Tech usage, gold is also used in jewelry, dental and other industrial applications. In this article, I will try to answer some of the frequently asked questions and give a few amazing facts about gold. I will also describe the story of the "Million Dollar Gold Coin" and how it ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records". I have been involved with a number of interesting projects but making of this coin was definitely the most challenging task for me.

Origin Of Word 'Gold'

Al Weisberg is a friend of mine. He is a founder of the Providence Jewelry Museum and an expert on the history of the jewelry industry in this country. He calls 'Agni' as the Patron Saint of jewelers. The reason for this is that the word 'Gold' is apparently derived from its Sanskrit name 'Jval'. We all know the word 'jvala' which means 'flame'. The Latin word for gold is 'Aurum' which means 'glowing dawn'. Like many other elements, the chemical symbol of gold, Au, is derived from its Latin name.

Properties Of Gold

Pure gold is most malleable and ductile metal. One troy ounce (31.1 grams) of gold can be beaten out to 2700 pieces of 4"x4" foil. The foils of this type were used extensively in the gilding of many of the Newport Mansions and hence the term 'The Gilded Age'. The gilded age in American history is loosely defined as the time period between 1890 and World War 1. Most of these mansions were built around the same time by the industrialists who were worth more than the money in the U.S. Treasury. Gold is extremely inert and is not affected by air, heat, moisture, and most solvents. It will, however, dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of 3 parts of hydrochloric acid and one part of nitric acid. This mixture is called aqua regia (royal water) because it dissolved gold, the King of Metals. It is an excellent reflector of infrared rays and is used in coating the glass panes in many large buildings. A few pennies worth of gold is enough to cover one square foot of the glass surface. It keeps the heat 'out' in summer and 'in' during the winter months.

Occurrence In Nature

Gold is found in nature in quartz veins and secondary alluvial deposits as a free metal. It also occurs in chemical combination with lead, tellurium and other metals. It is also present to some extent in iron pyrites. Iron pyrite is brassy yellow in color and it has a metallic luster. It is also called Fool's Gold because of its resemblance to a gold nugget. Weathering of the gold bearing rocks and the flowing water probably caused the release of gold nuggets which eventually got deposited at the bottom of riverbeds and created the California Gold Rush. The first nuggets were discovered on January 24, 1848. Even though the discoverers tried to keep the finding a secret, the word spread quickly and the rush began. The Gold Rush changed not only California but also the whole nation forever. However, the focus of this change was San Francisco. Before the Gold Rush only a few hundred people lived there. A plot of real estate that cost $16 in 1847 sold for $45,000 just 18 months later. The enterprising prospectors came from around the world. Most left home in 1849 and hence the nickname "forty-niners". A similar discovery in Canada 20 years later caused the Klondike Gold Rush and a "sixty-niner" nickname.

Famous Gold Pieces

The most famous piece of gold has to be the facemask of the boy-king of Egypt (1361-1352) Tutankhamun. The 1933 Double Eagle with a face value of $20 is said to be the most expensive gold coin in the world. It was sold in 2002 for the record sum of $7.59 million. However, the most famous gold piece in my books is the " Million Dollar Gold Coin" that was exhibited at the 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver, Canada.

The Million Dollar Gold Coin

I joined Leach and Garner Company in 1983 and became head of the Technology Division in 1985. In May of that year, I received a call from our Canadian Division. They wanted to know if we could produce a Million Dollar Gold Coin for the 86 Exposition. They wanted the coin to be at least 3 feet in diameter and contain a minimum of one million dollars worth of gold. Technically, it was a medallion because it did not have a face value. Without much thought, I told them "If anyone can do it, we can do it". They asked me to submit a proposal with an estimated cost and the time to finish the project. That is when I started to sweat. In any case a project with a cost of $20,000 was approved. Initially, we had planned on using pure gold but in that case the thickness of the coin would have been only 1/4". Therefore, we decided to use a 14-karat alloy and made it 3/4" thick. No one in the industry had done anything that big and we had to come up with a process which had to work the first time. Fortunately, it worked like a charm and we finished the whole project in less than 6 weeks. The coin was too big to use any of the traditional coining processes. To engrave the design on both sides, we employed a variation of a chemical etching process commonly used in manufacturing of circuit boards. For security reasons, the whole project was done in secrecy but once it was done, we started to get calls from the local and national industry news media. As soon as the Editor of the Coin World magazine heard about it, he came down to visit us. He wrote a nice article and submitted our entry to the Guinness Book of World Records. No one had reported anything like this before and there was no category for this type of a record. However, we were able to convince the Editor of book that the piece was unique and deserved the recognition. The following is a copy of the record from the 1987 Guinness Book of World Records. The coin was on exhibition for 6 months and then there was talk of Donald Trump trying to buy it. Apparently, the security costs prevented him from buying it. The coin came back to us and sadly, we had to cut it up and put it in the pot. At the Expo it was enclosed in thick glass case and the value of the gold was calculated daily based on that day's Second London Fix. There is a ritual that goes with gold price fixes, but that is a story for another day.

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