Carbon was a prehistoric discovery. The ancient people learned, most likely by accident, that if they burned wood in a special way that it turned into lightweight black chunks. The people then realized that these black chunks made a hotter fire and also burned without any smoke. The ancient people had no clue that these black chunks was the element carbon. In the early 1600's Belgian alchemist Jan Baptista van Helmont discovered that there was an invisible gas that protruded from the burning wood. In the latter part of the 1700's French scientist Antoine Lavoisier discovered that if he heated a diamond, the same gas protruded from the diamond that protruded out of the burning wood. This gas would end up being called carbon dioxide.

In 1799, the French scientist Guyton de Morveau discovered that there were two forms of carbon. Guyton discovered that if you put a diamond under heat and pressure that it would turn into graphite. From previous experiments he knew that steel was created by adding coal to molten iron. When Guyton added a diamond, instead of a piece of coal, to the molten iron it resulted again in the creation of steel. Guyton's experiment proved that a diamond and a piece of graphite are made out of the same element, carbon.    

Guyton de Morveau

Another allotrope of carbon was discovered by Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, and their colleagues were experimenting with carbon atoms and ions. They decided to shoot a laser beam through the carbon atoms and when they were analyzing the results they discovered that the atoms joined in a spherical shapes that looked like a soccer balls. These carbon soccer balls would eventually be called buckminsterfullerene, or "bucky balls."

                                       Robert F. Curl                                 Harry W. Kroto                            Richard E. Smalley