The Mohs Hardness Scale was introduced by Friedrich Mohs. Born in Gernrode, Germany, Mohs was a German mineralogist who exhibited a striking interest in Science at a very young age. He moved to Austria in 1802 where he took on a job for a banker trying to classify minerals in his personal collection. He then moved to Graz and worked in a museum and science academy established by Archduke Johann.

Regardless of chemical composition, Mohs started to classify minerals by their physical characteristics as part of his work. He noticed considerable conflict between the principal chemical systematics of these minerals and the emphasis on its physical characteristics. Based on this observation and knowledge on the way comparison of hardness was done in ancient time, Mohs created the scale of hardness in 1812.

He had carefully chosen ten minerals. Each mineral has hardness distinctly different from the other. The minerals he had selected for his scale are rather common, cheap, and easy to find aside from diamond.