The first gem-quality diamonds were produced in laboratories in the early 1970s. But it was only recently that production costs made them available for mass consumption. In the last few years, technological advances have further reduced the cost of producing gem-quality diamonds to even less than the cost of mining them. Growing diamonds in the laboratory is not a recent invention. Diamonds have been manufactured in laboratories for over 60 years, first successfully grown by General Electric (GE) researchers in 1954. In the beginning,lab grown diamond cost were not gem-quality and were only used for industrial applications.