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.