From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adamantine is a mineral, often referred to as adamantine spar. It is a silky brown form of corundum. It has a Mohs rating of 9.

Adamantine is also used as an adjective to refer to non-metallic, brilliant light reflecting and transmitting properties, known as adamantine luster. Diamond is the best known material to be described as having adamantine lustre, although anglesite, cerussite and corundum in some of its forms are also described in this way.

Adamantine is also a veneer developed by the Celluloid Manufacturing Company of New York City, covered by U.S. Patent number 232,037, dated September 7, 1880. Seth Thomas Clock Company purchased the right to use the Adamantine veneer in 1881.

Throughout ancient history, "adamantine" referred to anything that was made of a very hard material, adamant. The ancient Greeks were probably originally referring to steel, corundum or white sapphire. Later, by the Middle Ages, the term came to refer to diamond, as it was the hardest material then known. It was in the Middle Ages, too, that adamantine hardness and the lodestone's magnetic properties became confused and combined.

• Prometheus, from Greek mythology, was bound to a rock with Adamantine chains, implying that the material is strong enough to bind a god.
• Weapons, armor, and constructs (such as golems) can be made of "adamantine" in various Dungeons & Dragons settings, and video games or novels based in those settings. In the basic game system, it is found in meteorites that fall to earth containing the dark metal in rare and small fragments. In the Forgotten Realms, adamantine is a dark grey metal, refined from two rare ores, solarine and baloran. It is almost impossible to refine and forge, needing great heat, and weapons made of it are highly prized.
• In Roman mythology, Virgil describes Tartarus as having a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamantine guarded by a hydra with fifty black gaping jaws.
• The chains used to confine Satan in Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost are made from Adamantine.
• Adamantine is used in Bram Stoker's 1894 novel Dracula to describe the vampire form of Lucy Westenra.
• In the movie Forbidden Planet (1956), the structures built by the long-extinct Krell were said by Edward Morbius to have been "adamantine steel."
• In the novel Adiamante, by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Adiamante is the most powerful substance in the known universe and is used exclusively by the Cybs as armor for the hulls of their space ships. Adiamante is colored a jet black that actually is pure black so that you will look into the absence or near-absence of light. It is only visible as a result of seeing an absence of light in space, blocking out the stars.
• In Iter Vehemens ad Necem adamantine is a shiny white very strong material.
• In the MMORPG RuneScape, adamant is a type of metal used to make armour and weaponry. The raw ore, and in RuneScape Classic also the finished metal, is known as adamantite. Adamantite and adamant are depicted as dark green in colour. Adamantite is more powerful than mithril, but not as powerful as runite.
• In the real-time strategy videogame Age of Mythology, and its expansion pack, The Titans, adamantine, a "nearly unbreakable metal", was used by the Olympian gods to build gates that seal the Titans in Tartarus after the Titanomachy. According to the game's mythology, the admantine gates could only be opened by mortals, to prevent rebellious gods from freeing the Titans, and are located in the various boundaries of Hades.
• In Master of Magic adamantine is a type of weapon improvement depending on the resources available near a town.

Paradise Lost; (Milton) (the casting out of Satan from Heaven to Hell) "...To bottomless perdition, there to dwell in 'adamantine' chains and penal fire."

Emily Dickinson, How many times these low feet staggered or poem number 187 : "Handle the adamantine fingers / Never a thimble-more-shall wear-"

• Adamant
• Adamantium

• Bookrags adamantine page
• Mindat org adamantine spar page
• History of Seth Thomas Adamantine Antique Mantel Clocks