Sumio Iijima observes and characterizes carbon nanotubes in soot produced by electric arc discharge between graphite electrodes, the same process used to produce fullerenes. Nanotubes are graphene sheets rolled into a cylinder with extraordinary mechanical and electrical properties, becoming the most-studied nanostructured materials of the following decades. Earlier unreasoned, undeveloped observations exist: Radushkevich and Lukyanovich (USSR, 1952) published images of hollow nanoscale carbon tubes, ignored in the West due to Cold War scientific isolation; Oberlin, Endo, and Koyama (1976) documented similar fibers. None led to systematic characterization until Iijima's work.