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Carbon was discovered in prehistory and was known in the forms of soot and charcoal to the earliest human civilizations.

In 1772, Antoine Lavoisier showed that diamonds are a form of carbon; when he burned samples of charcoal and diamond and found that neither produced any water.

In 1779, Carl Wilhelm Scheele showed that graphite burned to form carbon dioxide and so must be another form of carbon.

The major use of carbon other than food and wood is in the form of hydrocarbons, most notably the fossil fuel methane gas and crude oil.

Graphite is used for pencil tips, high temperature crucibles, dry cells, electrodes and as a lubricant.

Diamonds are used in jewelry and in industry for cutting, drilling, grinding, and polishing.

Carbon black is used as the black pigment in printing ink.