User:Botogol/Alibert

Jean-Pierre Alibert (1820–1905) was a French explorer, trader, miner, businessman and dreamer who revolutionised an industry.

Early Life
Alibert was born in France in 1820, in either in Riom or Montauban (sources differ). Little is known about his early life.

Explorer
By his mid-thirties Alibert was a merchant and trader living in Siberia, and perhaps excited by tales of riches on California, in 1846 while on business trip to the remote Eastern regions he searched for signs of gold in the siberian rivers.

What he found was not gold but smooth, rounded lumps of pure, black graphite. Reasoning from their shape that the graphite must have been carried a long way by the river he set about tracing it(and all its tributaries) backwards looking for the source. In 1847 he found it – some 250 miles west of his first find high at Mount Botogol, near the Chinese Border.

It was this remote location that he built his mine, and from their shipped graphite thousands of miles to Europe.

Manufacturer and Philanthropist
Alibert was worshipped by the local tribes people, an e his name was Jean-Pierre

By the end of the C19 Alibert’s mine, and Siberian graphite, were a synonymous with quality pencils were produced with the wording: Siberian Graphite, and Alibert Mine. I have about 15 in my collection. Alibert's enthusiasm for his graphite was endless: he is said to have personally sorted and graded the graphite produced in his mine which, at it's best, was certified by English scientists as being the equal of that produced by the now-exhausted mine at Borrowdale (and certified by French scientists as being far superior to it!)

Alibert sold exclusive rights to the graphite produced in his mine to the German firm of A.W.Faber, and it was this purchase, once they had mastered the Conté process, that was to make a cottage industry into a world-famous firm.

Return to France
In 1862, plagued by rheumatism and his fortune made, Alibert returned to his native country to look for a cure. After some years of unsuccessful treatments he settled in 1871 at the spa town of Chateauxneuf Les Bains not far from his birthplace where his condition improved sufficiently for him to declare himself cured and in 1892 he erected the Virgin of Hope (Verge d'Esperance) statue atop a nearby mountain overlooking the Sioule valley, which was renamed Pic Alibert in his memory.