In the four hundred years that Amsterdam has been a center of diamond processing and trading, many diamond dealers have contributed to the city’s fame.
From time immemorial there were many ‘self-employed’, small independent businesses that hired a polishing wheel from larger companies. In addition, there were larger companies with polishing factories which were sometimes equipped with hundreds of polishing wheels. At the end of the 19th century there were a total of more than 7000 polishing wheels in use.