A HISTORY OF CARBON
Even early humans knew about carbon, in the form of soot and charcoal. In ancient Rome the word carbo meant coal and charcoal, which is where the English word carbon comes from. Romans made charcoal by heating wood covered with clay to exclude air. We still do that in the same way now. Diamonds were probably first found around 4,500 years ago in China.
However, it’s only in the last 500 years that people realised that all of these different forms were the same element. Diamond, being very hard and strong, was the most difficult to study. But in 1694 Italian scientists discovered that they could destroy diamonds with heat. They shone sunlight through a large magnifying glass onto a diamond, and the gem eventually disappeared. In 1796 an English scientist showed that diamond was a form of carbon because as it burns it forms only carbon dioxide.