Hot isostatic press / hydrothermal vessel explosion lineage

When nature makes quartz, nature takes millions of years to slowly lay down, in an aqueous solution, the SiO2 molecules on top of the solid quartz out of some silica solution. Bob [Laudise] basically developed hydrothermal growth of quartz where you have this silicon hydroxide liquid at very high temperatures, and over about a month you can grow a crystal that could be ten or twenty feet high and about this big around out of quartz. There are these reactors, the steel walls about ten inches thick. One of them blew up near Chicago airport a few years ago and landed on the McDonald's at the highway and killed one of the guys eating at McDonald's. Very high pressure, like 10,000 psi for hydrothermal growth of quartz. He just speeded up the natural process and all of a sudden quartz watches became available.