ABSTRACT
The first evidence of the use of coal appears in the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Later, coal was used by the Romans to a limited extent: a quantity of mined coal was found in one of the forts of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. A rapid expansion in coal usage occurred after 1700 because of the discovery that coal could be used in the manufacture of iron. In Britain coal was first used to replace charcoal for smelting iron ores in the seventeenth century. Developments in Germany at this time were far more interesting. Germany’s extensive coalfields were not fully exploited until 1850. The deposits in the Ruhr and the Saarland, as well as the Westphalian deposits near Aachen, were not effectively worked until 1815 and the Silesian field was not seriously developed until 1840. Extensive mining of diamonds was carried out in India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries east of the Deccan Plateau.
