CARBORUNDUM is the name given by Acheson in America to a substance he obtained accidentally when experimenting in 1891 with the electric furnace in the hope of producing artificial diamonds. These experiments were followed by others with an incandescent furnace of which a larger form is now used for the industrial manufacture of the product. Acheson generally receives credit for the discovery of carborundum, although it had previ ously been discovered by a few other experimenters, and gave it its name because he believed it to be a compound of carbon and corundum, a naturally occurring crystalline form of alumina (q.v.). It was subsequently found to be silicon carbide (q.v.), and is now manufactured on a large scale for use as an abrasive in the metallurgy of iron and steel. It has various other trade names, crystolon, carbolon, carbonite, samite, etc., and is some times used with diamond dust, for cutting diamonds.
The name carborundum is protected by trade mark registration in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and similar protection has been applied for in the Union of South Africa.