Source: Deseret News — Bill Pope Obituary Feature (2010)

Summary

Sara Israelsen-Hartley's December 2010 feature on the death of Bill Pope. It is the only source found so far that states the chain connecting H. Tracy Hall's diamond work to the Utah companies that industrialized it, and it does so in the words of a named, identifiable industry figure — Rob Galloway, then CEO of US Synthetic.

Useful Claims

• Bill Pope was a chemical engineer, businessman, former BYU professor and inventor, and helped found three Utah companies.
• The first of those was Megadiamond, founded with Tracy Hall and Duane Horton. The article attributes to that work the ability of oil and gas companies to drill through thousands of feet of rock without replacing drill bits.
• US Synthetic in Orem is named as one of Pope's three companies, with Rob Galloway as its CEO at the time of writing.
• At age 75, Pope founded Diamicron, applying diamond technology to products including long-lasting diamond-coated hip joints.
• Pope is described as "one of the pioneers in adapting man-made diamonds for industrial use."

The article gives no founding dates for any of the three companies, and does not describe Louis Pope's role in founding US Synthetic.

Verbatim

"Yet his influence will live on. Not only did Pope help found three Utah companies, but he's regarded as one of the pioneers in adapting man-made diamonds for industrial use, said Rob Galloway, CEO of US Synthetic in Orem, one of Pope's three companies." — Body

"Thanks to the work of Pope and his colleagues Tracy Hall and Duane Horton and their first company, Megadiamond, oil and natural gas companies could use the power of man-made diamonds to chew through thousands of feet of rock without needing to replace the drill bits." — Body

"But revolutionizing the drilling industry wasn't enough for Pope, Galloway said. At the age of 75 he founded another company, Diamicron, to harness the power of diamond technology for things like long-lasting, diamond-coated hip joints." — Body

"Despite several years of congestive heart failure that took a massive toll, Pope, an engineer, businessman, former BYU professor and inventor, continued to trundle into his office, oxygen tank in tow, to review patents and pose new ideas for development." — Body

Reliability Notes

Secondary tier, and specifically an obituary feature — a genre that is generous by construction and that compresses corporate history into a legacy narrative. The load-bearing lineage sentence is attributed to a named CEO of one of the companies involved, which makes it a well-placed source but also an interested one.

What it establishes well: that Pope, Hall, and Horton worked together at MegaDiamond, and that US Synthetic and Diamicron are part of the same family of companies. What it does not establish: any founding date, ownership structure, or the relative contributions of the people named. Those need a registry or a filing, and none has been pulled yet.

No Internet Archive snapshot exists for this URL — resolve-archive-snapshots.mjs searched the CDX index on 2026-08-11 and found none. The **Raw:** capture is therefore the only durable copy the wiki holds, which is exactly the case raw/ exists for.

Related Pages

• US Synthetic
• H. Tracy Hall's Diamond Presses
• Source: US Synthetic Company History Page