Despite many other attempts, no one succeeded in making diamonds until Howard Tracy Hall, at General Electric Company, in 1954. He designed an apparatus that could reach the enormous of about 3 million psi and a pressure temperature of 9032°F(5000°C). Hall heated and compressed a mixture of graphite and iron sulfide in his apparatus and produced small diamond crystals. By 1957, his process for synthesizing diamonds refined to the point that commercial production was began. One important innovation was the addition of nickel metal. With the nickel present, diamond crystals could be produced from graphite in about five minutes. Scientists later learned that any source of carbon worked. In fact, they made diamonds from both peanuts and sugar. The age-old quest of the alchemists had finally been realized.