What do we know about shungite
V. Schumann has only a couple of lines about shungite in his book “Precious and Semi-Precious Stones”:
“Black glassy coal. Mainly composed of carbon. The only deposit in Karelia.”
Not much. Let's go look for information.
And there turned out to be a lot of it. The bibliography of magazine and newspaper articles, monographs, production reports, and official documents exceeds 2000 titles.
Samples of shungite rock
The first documentary mention of the rock is the decree of Peter I (dated 1706) about black Nigozero shale .
Anthracite suffering
Mining engineer Kontkevich (back in 1878) explored the “anthracite” deposit in Zaonezhye. Kontkevich was the first to come to the conclusion that “the so-called Shungin anthracite does not fully deserve the name given to it and is, apparently, a new, hitherto unknown type of fossil coal.”
So they tried to use the mineral as coal. Excellent and necessary fuel for those times. But the “ Shung anthracite ” burned like hell.
The yacht “Strelna” belonged to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. And the son of the Emperor of All Rus' did not disdain to participate in the tests of the coal. Although Konstantin was an admiral general of the Russian fleet and took his duties very seriously.
“Although the yacht <...> arrived on Shungin anthracite from Kronstadt to St. Petersburg, it took 31/2 hours for this passage (usually steamships take 11/2 hours) and despite the fact that English coal was mixed with the anthracite.”
Anthracite did not pass the test...
