Spruce Pine Was a Freak Accident

The mountains that run down the east coast of the US used to be taller than the Himalayas, violently pushed to the sky when Africa smashed into North America, forming one giant supercontinent, Pangea. Friction along the line impact created incredible temperatures that melted rock 15 miles beneath the surface. Molten rock that would become the courts pulled from the corridors of Spruce Pine. Call it a freak accident like the asteroid that smashed into South Africa, creating a small area that's produced a quarter of the world's gold.

But the freak in this accident wasn't the impact. It was the complete and total absence of water carrying things with it like a bus. Water drops molecules here and there that pollute the purity of quartz. Zero water, zero impurities with zero impurities. The molten silicon dioxide was left to cook at high temperature for 100 million years. Very, very, very slowly being pushed towards the surface as the African continent pulled away from North America, letting the mountains shrink to where they are today.

A fifth of their original height. Cool the molten rock quickly and would have turned into tiny, messy crystals. But the 100 million year timer attached to this science experiment formed them into massive, organized crystals mined out of the ground by two very secretive companies who no doubt would prefer this video to not be made visible in satellite imagery. You can see bright white veins of quartz trucks mingling about behind a 25ft high wall, patrolled as though an enemy is bound to arrive any moment, surrounded by nothing but a very small town, trees and hills 500 miles away, the semiconductor was invented at Bell Labs in New Jersey. 30 years later, across the country, Intel perfected it, crowning themselves King of technology.