Etymology

Ruby comes from the Latin word for red: ‘ruber’. The medieval Latin adjective ‘rubinus’ was derived from ‘ruber’ and eventually started to be used as a noun for red corundum. From there it was a small step from rubinus to ruby.

History

Ancient History

The area around Mogok, Myanmar has seen human habitation since the middle paleolithic period. It is not so hard to believe that these early inhabitants would have stumbled upon the fine rubies of this locality and kept them as decoration, amulets, or maybe even tools.

Archaeological investigations have been very scarce. The restrictions for foreigners to enter the country that were been put into place by the military regime of Myanmar prevent us from getting a clear picture of the ancient inhabitants of the area and their use of rubies. Another ancient source of gem corundum has been Sri Lanka.

We can find written accounts of red stones that could be ruby in the writings of Theophrastus who speaks of red stones that resemble hot coal when viewed with the sun behind it. He calls this stone anthrax but whether he was describing garnet, spinel or ruby isn’t clear. Pliny‘s account on red stones is similarly vague and seems to describe more than one red gemstone under the same name; carbunculus. An interesting note is that Pliny mentions glass imitation stones that can be distinguished from genuine gemstones by hardness and inclusion studies.

​After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the epicenter of science moved east a bit. Arabic scholars during the second half of the first millennium AD speak of Yakut, a term used for corundum and a few other gemstones. It is believed that red Yakut is correctly translated to ruby. The writers of Asia Minor had a far better knowledge of ruby localities than the classical writers and when one reads the descriptions known deposits like Badakshan and Sri Lanka can be recognized. One polymath in particular leaves very little doubt that he is describing ruby; the 11th-century scholar Al-Biruni, who conducted specific gravity determinations on a whole series of gemstones. His findings are very accurate; he lists a specific gravity of 3.85 for ruby. Two centuries later the Europeans were still fumbling around in the dark. This can be seen in the writings of Albertus Magnus who erroneously mentions Libya as a major locality, a mistake most likely to have come from reading the 11th-century lapidary from Marbodus. Rubies from present-day Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar would have reached Europe through the ports on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean up until then.

When Western European armies went on their crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries they encountered (and looted) the riches of the Arabic world. With it came a revived interest in the East and its economic potential. The travel logs of Marco Polo, written in the 13th century were the first eyewitness accounts of the world to the east of present-day India and his memoirs have inspired many to travel to the East and harvest its riches. The centuries after Polo’s journey are the ages of discovery that brought new gemstones to the West along with a better understanding of their nature and origin.

Renaissance & Enlightenment

The increased contact with the advanced Arabic scholars from the 11th century and later the invention of movable print during the last years of the Middle Ages engendered a new level of knowledge among European readers. Accounts from de Boodt and Nicols – the authors of two lapidaries of the 17th century – discuss rubies, their deposits and their use in greater detail than any of their European predecessors. The 18th century is marked by a further growing mineralogical consciousness until finally ruby and sapphire were both recognized as corundum around 1800.

Modern History

The heat treatment of ruby to improve color and clarity is described in some of the earliest known sources on the subject. The beginning of the 19th century saw the invention of the gas blowpipe which enabled higher temperatures to be reached than had ever been achieved previously. E.D. Clarke published details of his experiments with it:

..two rubies were placed upon charcoal and exposed to the flame of the gas blowpipe… after suffering it to become cold… the two rubies were melted into one bead.¹

Across the 19th century, attempts had also been made to create man-made rubies. A few less fruitful attempts made in the 1830s inspired the head of the chemistry laboratory of the Natural History Museum in Paris, Edmond Fremy, to take up the cause. He managed to produce small rubies by heating the raw materials for ruby in a flux that causes them to dissolve at much lower temperatures. Cooling of the flux, containing the dissolved ingredients, caused crystallisation of rubies. One of Fremy’s assistants, Auguste Verneuil finally managed to create large enough crystals of synthetic ruby with a revolutionary method that still bears his name.

But, not all was artificial. The 19th century brought European miners to the Mogok Valley in Myanmar and large amounts of ruby were mined and introduced to the Western markets.

Contemporary History

The 20th century has seen a score of inventions that allowed advanced heat treatment techniques, new methods of synthesis and filling techniques to emerge.