1900–1946

Evidence: Well-supported historical consensus

Crystallography

Early 20th-century X-ray work settles graphite as stacked honeycomb sheets of carbon — a 3D crystal built from 2D units. That picture is what later lets Wallace treat one sheet as a Hamiltonian ([[timeline/1947]]).

Oxide line continues

Brodie-style oxidation does not freeze in 1859. Papers and “graphite oxide paper” products through the 1910s keep the chemical route alive. This is still lamellar oxide, not a gated monolayer device.

Industry, not Dirac

Graphite is an industrial mineral: electrodes, refractories, brushes, lubrication, and (soon) nuclear work. Strategic demand in both world wars is about bulk carbon, not 2D physics.

What does not exist yet

• A named laboratory material “graphene” in the 1986 systematic sense.
• A transport measurement of a free flake on SiO₂.
• A company whose business model is monolayer film.

Next

[[timeline/pre-chemistry]] ← previous craft history · [[timeline/1947]] → Wallace