GemEx Systems has reached the one-million mark--an important milestone for the Milwaukee-area company, says company president Randall Wagner. About eight years ago, GemEx developed and introduced the BrillianceScope to the market. It's a device that provides high tech gemstone analysis to evaluate the brilliance and scintillation of diamonds for diamond cutters, wholesalers, retail jewelers, and their customers. "Recently, one of our machines evaluated the one-millionth diamond that we have approved with our quality check over that time," says Wagner.

GemEx currently has approximately 150 BrillianceScopes in the field. They are located in diamond cutting facilities, wholesale businesses, and retail jewelry stores in the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Israel, Bangkok, Antwerp, Hong Kong, China and Japan.

"Prior to the invention of the BrillianceScope there was no precise way to quantify a diamond's beauty," Wagner says. "People had to trust their own eyes. But the BrillianceScope verifies that they are purchasing an exceptionally brilliant and beautiful diamond."

The BrillianceScope applies spectrophotometry technology to rate a diamond's brilliance and sparkle. This scientifically based process for grading the "life" or brilliance of a diamond provides the consumer with a detailed analysis of how the diamond's "beauty" compares to other diamonds, according to Wagner.

"The BrillianceScope viewer in the various stores replicates the lighting conditions used in the stone's evaluation and allows our consumers to 'see' and compare the actual brilliance of the diamonds. Customers can see the difference immediately," he explains.

According to Wagner, the BrillianceScope analysis goes beyond the standard "four C's" system of evaluating diamond quality. Traditionally diamonds are judged based on Carat weight, Clarity (lack of impurities), Cut (the geometry of the diamond cut) and Color (white vs. yellow).

The four C's determine the rarity and price of a diamond. Many of these measurements, prior to the use of spectrophotometry technology, were subject to the judgment of the individual person grading the gem.

"Now we can go beyond the four C's and actually evaluate and compare the results scientifically," he states. "These variables, when optimized, result in diamonds with brilliant reflective qualities and that's exactly what the BrillianceScope measures. We can now show consumers two diamonds with similar characteristics side by side, but one will have superior 'brilliance' or 'light performance' ratings, making it a much better value," he adds.

"We use our technology to measure a diamond's light performance--its white light and color light. It also separately measures a diamond's scintillation," he says. "When it comes to buying diamonds, consumers are most concerned with the appearance, the play of light in the diamond. They want to get that 'wow' effect. Our system actually measures the light performance and sparkle or scintillation of a diamond. If it's well cut it has lots of light performance. If it's poorly cut it doesn't have much light. The diamond crystal and the craftsmanship affect the light performance as well. If either is lacking, the diamond will not have good light performance. GemEx's light measurements incorporate both characteristics, and it is Light Performance that we perceive as beauty."

He explains that GemEx has developed a simple linear scale, from low to very high for, for rating white light, color light, and scintillation. "Over the years, we've measured hundreds of thousands of diamonds of each shape and found what the best light performance was and what the worst was. It's a kind of bench marking," he explains.

Gems that have been analyzed by the BrillianceScope are issued a complete light performance analysis report, which includes the comparative bar graphs. The diamond is rated from "low" to "very high" in each of the categories: white light, color light and scintillation.

The report also shows five images (similar to pictures), which are taken with the BrillianceScope from various distinct light angles.

The BrillianceScope does the measuring and provides a countertop viewer for jewelers. A diamond is placed inside a chamber and a moving light source snaps six pictures of the diamond. Then the images are transmitted to GemEx in Mequon, which processes them for the measurements.

An electrical engineer with undergrad and grad degrees from Marquette and Purdue universities, respectively, Wagner, along with his partner Kurt Shoeckert, founded the company to provide unique diamond evaluation equipment and services.

By providing these Brilliancescope evaluations, Wagner's company is putting more power in the hand of the diamond consumer, he says. "Now they can spend their money more wisely."