Carbon

Carbon: historical information

Carbon as charcoal, soot and coal has been used since prehistoric times. Carbon as diamond has also been known since very ancient times. The recognition that soot (amorphous carbon), graphite (another form of carbon) and diamond are all forms of carbon.

A fourth form, buckminsterfullerene, formula C₆₀, whose framework is reminiscent of the seams in an Association Football ("soccer") ball, is the subject of considerable interest at present and was only discovered a few years ago in work involving Harry Kroto, a Sheffield graduate.

Sometime prior to the autumn of 1803, the Englishman John Dalton was able to explain the results of some of his studies by assuming that matter is composed of atoms and that all samples of any given compound consist of the same combination of these atoms. Dalton also noted that in series of compounds, the ratios of the masses of the second element that combine with a given weight of the first element can be reduced to small whole numbers (the law of multiple proportions). This was further evidence for atoms. Dalton's theory of atoms was published by Thomas Thomson in the 3rd edition of his System of Chemistry in 1807 and in a paper about strontium oxalates published in the Philosophical Transactions. Dalton published these ideas himself in the following year in the New System of Chemical Philosophy. The symbol used by Dalton for carbon is shown below. [See History of Chemistry, Sir Edward Thorpe, volume 1, Watts & Co, London, 1914.]

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