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February 3, 2020 42 mins

Mastery of fire was one of humanity’s greatest technological leaps forward, but even the ability to create fire only gets you so far if the flame is not easily generated and/or transferred. Thus, the millennia-spanning quest to create the subtle technology we so easily take for granted: the modern matchstick. Join Robert and Joe for a multi-episode Invention exploration on fire-generation technology.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're back this week with part two
of our exploration of fire technology and specifically the Match,
the Humble Match, the enticing Match, the intoxicating Match. Well

(00:25):
I'm getting carried away here. Yes. In our last episode,
we we really covered a lot of ground. We started
with an ancient Earth incapable of sustaining fire, and we
moved on to humanity's earliest uses of the Pilford flame.
From there, we discovered the great leap forward into fire
creation technology, namely fire drills and flint and pye rite

(00:46):
or flint and steel. And we also talked about fuel
manufactured fuel such as shopping wood and create you know,
creating more suitable types of fuel for your fire, but
also specialized fuel. And this led to little sticks of
wood for moving fire from one place to another and
ultimately the origins of the sulfur match, in which a

(01:09):
little uh, a little piece of wood is then dipped
into sulfur to create a piece of a fuel that
lights up very readily, allows you to transfer fire from
one place to another. Right now. One of the things
we talked about in the last episode and we needed
to make is a very clear distinction, was that the
sulfur match that was very invented in ancient China may

(01:30):
also have existed in ancient Rome. According to a few
references um there uh that this was a chemical match
and that was used to quickly catch fire. But it
was not a friction match. It was not a match
that you would be able to light by striking it
across the surface. Right. If you were to travel back
in time, uh, you know into two uh to to

(01:52):
China at the time, request to match and an attempt
to strike it, you would just be a match destroyer.
And people would we wondered, what you're trying to do?
Why are you rubbing? Uh? This the special what was
the term for it? Um the light bringing slaves? Yeah?
Why are you taking our light bringing slaves and just
destroying them against a brick wall? Uh? Yeah. But they

(02:13):
would still be quite useful even though they could only
be ignited by existing heat or flame, because they'd be
useful for say, transferring fire from one place to another.
You want to take fire, say out of a pot
and light a candle or something. Right, Yeah, and one
of the I think the big take comes. Certainly, go
back and listen to that episode of view you haven't,
but I think one of the big take comes, uh.
And one of the biggest discoveries for me was just

(02:33):
thinking about fire as a process, as a thing that happens,
and then all these fire technologies are ways of managing uh,
that process to transform an event into like a tangible substance.
You know. A lot of times that means sort of
putting the fire in a kind of suspended animation, like
reducing the fire as much as possible without actually extinguishing

(02:57):
it to make it manageable. And this was also something
we talked about as an ancient technology that existed probably
even before humans had the ability to make their own fires. Uh,
they had various methods they'd come up with to carry
fire around without it going out. So, for example, we
talked about the possessions of Otsy the Iceman, who was

(03:17):
found in the Italian Alps in ninety one, this neolithic
mummy who was frozen there in the glacier, and one
of the things he had on him was a little
container made out of birch bark, that appeared to be
for carrying coals around, So you could take a coal
out of one fire, put it in this little container
rapid in leaves, and you'd have a coal that would
continue to burn for hours in case you need to

(03:39):
make camp really quickly. You know, one thing I kept
thinking about when we were talking about it in the
last episode is Disney Christmas Carol, in which Cratchett played
by Mickey Mouse, brings home a hot coal from Ebenezer
scroogees uh stove to to light his own stove at home. Oh,
I don't know if I even remember this. I believe

(04:00):
if that is the case, unless I'm misremembering, there is
any um if it wasn't that it's some other version
of a Christmas Carol that I've seen and it wasn't
doubting that I'm saying, I'm not aware. It's also possible
that it wasn't Cratchett bringing home the code, but perhaps
Scrooge bringing home a hot coal from his office place
to ignite some small fire at his home. He is

(04:20):
all about efficiency. Yeah, but but you know, it makes
a lot more sense now that one really gets down
and considers the pain of having to start a fire.
You know, it makes sense to bring that hot coal
home if you have the ability to transfer transfer it. Now,
in this episode we are going to be getting into
the origins of the actual friction match. But I started

(04:40):
to wonder. Okay, so we know based on the last
episode that there were several things that were called a
match before the friction match existed. So where does this
term match come from? Yeah, we mentioned Mandarin terminology, we
mentioned a little Latin. But as James Whisney I points
out in his match is the Manufacturer of Fire from

(05:01):
two thousand five published in the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology,
the word match seems to come from the French uh
meche I think, and this would be a wick as
in a lamp, and it likely refers back to the
Latin uh um might mix us. I believe it is
a mix of mixa, which would be the wick of
a lamp. But the key technology that led to the

(05:22):
naming of the match dicks see, it seems was what
is known as the slow match. Now, this is something
that's probably gonna be confusing yet again because this has
some things in common with matches of today. In the
matches we've been talking about other things very not in common. Right,
The slow match was essentially a slow burning cord or
twine uh fuse that early musketeers and soldiers used to

(05:46):
ignite early firearms and cannons. To put it in pirate
terms for everybody, because this may ring a bell legendary
pirate to Edward Blackbeard Teach who lives sixteen eight through
seventeen eighteen, is said to have twisted slow matches under
his hat, like in his hair um, and then they'd
be lit on both sides to frighten his enemies slash victims.

(06:08):
So when you hear the phrase slow match, you need
to think fuse. It is it is like a rope
like object that has been made to burn slowly. Yeah,
And but that's the other thing. When you think fuse,
don't think a firecracker fuse like you you have probably
some experience with today, or like a cartoon fuse, you know,
where it's just zipping around really quickly and there's just

(06:30):
a fast um transfer of that spark to the explosive. No,
this would be a slow, smoldering string twine cord type object. Yeah.
So yeah, generally you're talking about some rope or cord
soaked in potassium nitrate, which is a key constituent of gunpowder,
and then it would be dried, you'd light it, you'd

(06:50):
you'd blow out the flame, but then a red ember
would continue to burn and work its way down the cord.
So really, if you if you think of a fuse
like a firecracker refuse with all the sparking, and you
think about it going really slowly, that's essentially what's happening.
Very similar thing actually to the carrying of the coal
in the in the birch bark container. It's something to
keep a low fire smoldering for a long period of

(07:13):
time that can be used to reignite something else quickly. Yeah,
basically getting that fire into a state of suspended animation
where it's there when you need it. But it's also
you're not just like carrying around a big flaming torch,
especially if you're having to deal with gunpowder. Though, as
we'll discuss in a minute, it didn't come without dangers. Yes,
So another place some of you might have seen this

(07:35):
is you would you would typically find the slow match
physically attached to a weapon such as a musket or
clipped to the matchlock mechanism of a matchlock weapon. Yes.
For a really great recent media example, if you've seen
the horror movie The Witch, directed by Robert Egger's, Uh,
there is a scene in the movie where actually, throughout

(07:56):
the movie, um, the characters carry around a musket and
it is a matchlock musket. There's a scene where the
father played by Ralph Ineson is trying to hunt He's
trying to shoot a rabbit. Uh, And you can see
it has this long tail of cord sticking out of it.
Sometimes they carry it with the cords sort of wrapped
around what looks like a cleat of some kind on

(08:17):
the stock. And in the scene where he tries to
hunt a rabbit, you can watch him going through these
kind of tedious, dangerous, laborious steps of like pouring out
the powder, packing it, getting the slow match lit and
then blowing on it to make it smolder, and then
clipping it into the hook. Like it looks like it
would be a very difficult weapon to use, and in

(08:38):
one sense it is like, but you might wonder, watching
all of this laborious stuff, why was the matchlock musket
actually an invention? What would this be an improvement over? Uh?
So I was reading about this, and apparently previously gunpowder
based weapons would usually have to be lit by hand.
So try to imagine that, like in the moment, the

(09:00):
gunner would have to carefully set fire to the priming powder,
which was in a small receptacle called the flash pan,
and they would have to do that by hand, and
then of course the ignition of the powder and the
flash pan would in turn set off the main charge
inside the barrel and then propel the ball out towards
the target. But just imagine trying to do this aim

(09:21):
a weapon at a target while you're trying to carefully
light the flash pan by hand. I mean, it's it
seems borderline impossible. And generally weapons before this period were
not handheld. You'd be talking about cannons, you know, mounted
artillery and stuff, but the musket was something that you
wanted to be able to hold in your hands and aim.

(09:41):
And the match lock provided a huge advantage here by
freeing the musket carrier's hands to hold and aim the weapon.
So here, after you pack the weapon, so you you
put the powder for the main charge down the barrel,
you'd pack the ball in you you'd smash it down
with the stick and then what you would do is
s the end of the slow match this fuse like cord.

(10:03):
You'd set the end of that burning, you'd blow on it,
get it smoldering, and then you'd clip the burning end
of the slow match into a little metal arm called
a serpentine, and then you put the powder in the
flash pan. And after you've done all that, you could
aim the weapon and pull the trigger. And what would
happen when you pull the trigger is that the metal
serpentine would automatically lower the smoldering slow match down into

(10:27):
the flash pan to ignite the charge. And this was
a big improvement over the hand lighting of the powder.
But as you can probably tell from the description, it's
still going to be very slow firing, laborious. It could
still be dangerous because you'd probably be like trying to
manage a burning slow match as you're like pouring powder
into various parts of the gun. Uh So there are

(10:49):
several drawbacks of course to the matchlock must get Number one,
you would have some kind of giveaways to the enemy,
right Like, so you're trying to line up to shoot
at night, and you'd be having to light these fires
and have the slow match burning. You would be able
to smell it. Uh, and then of course there's the
danger of the smoldering thing next to all this powder
you're juggling around. This makes me wonder, you know, all

(11:10):
these various first person shooter video games, they often devote
a great deal of detail to how guns are loaded
and reloaded and and then brought back into position for firing.
But it happens really fast. I wonder if if there
is a game out there that gives even like a
halfway accurate depiction of the use of a matchlock weapon. Yeah,

(11:34):
like a fifteenth century first person shooter where it takes,
you know, at least thirty seconds to load every shot. Yeah,
that would be that'd be an interesting call of duty
game right there. Well, I think maybe it actually could
be that kind of the stakes, and I think it
would be It would be interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's
at least one or two archaic weapons in the Fallout games,
but you know, it's all on auto reload. You just push.

(11:55):
Reloading just takes a while. It would be interesting if
there was a game where you you actually had to, uh,
you know, do this maneuver with one joystick and another
with the other joystick and whereas it was so that
actually reloading this weapon required uh more of a you know,
a cognitive responsibility on the part of the player, and
if you screw up while you're reloading, it literally explodes

(12:16):
in your face and kills you. And then but so
there's a funny thing here where the progression of the
firing mechanism in in gun technology actually goes kind of
opposite of what we've been talking about in the progress
of firelighting and matches, because you go in history from
the matchlock musket to the flint lock musket, and the
flint lock was said to be an improvement because you

(12:38):
didn't have to have a fire lit there. Instead, you
just have the powder in your flash pan and it
would be ignited by the striking of the flint that
happens when you release the hammer. Interesting. Now, of course,
that has its own problems. With the flint lock, I
think there was a greater chance of the weapon misfiring, right,
maybe you don't get a good spark or something. But anyway,

(12:58):
I thought that was interesting content x for the idea
of the match. You know, when you think about the
way it works with the weapon, is it's there to
be a fire that's ready whenever you need it. Yeah,
and this is really, I mean, this is key to
so many technologies, right, I mean again coming back to
even the the hot water heater in in in the household.
You know, it's how do you make sure the fire

(13:20):
is there when you need it, but in a safe way,
in a way that is not going to endanger everybody.
So as far as matches and the match lock and
the slow match, basically, Whisneak writes that the match was just,
you know, basically with with more of a modern match.
It's just a way of having a fire ready for
you when you need it. And so it's you know,

(13:41):
quite reasonable transfer of names here to talk about the
wooden match with the legacy of the slow match. Yeah,
I think that's great because ultimately, what we're gonna get
to with the friction matches that you don't need to
have a fire burning at all, and yet it's still
ready the moment you need it, right, and it's it's
certainly gonna be a little bit more like the the
the flint lock scenario that we're just talking about. So, uh,

(14:04):
we discussed in the last episode how humans have spent
a lot of time poking around in the fire and
using fire among other means to understand the nature of
various substances. And that's eventually essentially how we got to
the notion of using sulfur or potassium nitrate. Even right
there are these substances, we figured out how to in
some cases you know, refine them. And then what happens
when we had fire to them, Well, they spark or

(14:27):
they explode or they they they catch fire more readily
than other substances, and that they can ultimately, like sulfur
can if coding the end of a little stick can
make that stick a better fuel to use for transferring
flame from one point to another. Now, the flame bringing
power of sulfur as we know goes back way into
the ancient world that was known about by you know,

(14:48):
the ancient Chinese, by the ancient Romans. But there are
going to be new chemicals coming online that may serve
this job even better. Yes, humans began to under uncover
new substances such as is even new elements such as phosphorus,
which in the seventeenth century became the first new element
not known since ancient times. And some arguments have been

(15:10):
made for other chemists othern you know, discoveries haven't been
having taken place earlier or around the same time, but
credit is typically given to the German alchemist hinting Brand
in sixteen sixty nine. Now, a quick note on alchemy,
which is a rich topic unto itself, but we're largely
dealing with a proto scientific mixture of chemical research and

(15:31):
occult magic, the continuation of mystery traditions, etcetera. I love
the period of alchemy. It's so culturally and historically interesting,
especially when you're thinking about the history of science, because
it is a time when in some cases, real knowledge
is advancing right alongside what people believed were equivalent advances

(15:55):
in knowledge about like demonology and how to you know,
how to do spells, at the same time that people
really are learning things about, say, uh, chemistry and the
curing of certain diseases. Yeah. Like, for instance, in Bronze case,
he was seeking the legendary Philosopher's Stone. Now, this is
a substance of that was said to have miraculous powers.

(16:18):
It was capable of transforming metals into u into other metals.
You know, this is that lead into gold, uh scenario,
but it could also provide immortality. That's why it factors
into a Harry Potter novel, for instance. But Broun sought
it in urine, in urine, distilling it down to a

(16:39):
white material that glowed in the dark. And this was phosphorus.
Mirabulous or miraculous bearer of light. Who would have known
that PP was so illuminating? Indeed, it was all right,
we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back,
we will return to the mysteries of the urine, and
we will talk about phosphorus. Alright, we're back. So as

(17:06):
one might expect, given its alchemical origins, UH, phosphorus was
a secret. At first, it was traded and it was sold,
but it eventually it became known beyond these chambers of secret. Uh.
Its most impressive attribute is that it instantly combusts in air,
making it a nasty element in many ways. And and
we see we see this today with the use of

(17:27):
a white phosphorus munitions, which popped up in the twentieth century,
and then they are still used today by some militaries,
despite the fact that this and other incendiary weapons have
been banned by multiple international laws. UM white phosphorus munitions
can produce additional like terrible burns via burning particles as

(17:48):
well as harmful vapors. Yeah, I was reading an article
about this in Reuters from two thousand nine because I
tried to sort this out before. It's sort of complicated
and confusing because phosphorus based incendiaries have both legal and
illegal uses in war these days. Um, and that can
lead to, you know, arguments about specific uses. So white

(18:11):
phosphorus today, as it would be used as a munition,
is this colorless or sometimes kind of yellow waxy substance
I've read this. Router's article mentioned that it sometimes smells
like garlic. I did not know that, but that it
ignites in the air very easily at temperatures of something
like thirty degrees celsius or about eighty six degrees fahrenheit,

(18:34):
and it can be very hard to put out once
it's ignited. Um. But apparently common uses of white phosphorus,
in addition to you know, just being a direct incendiary weapon,
are in like tracer ammunition, so to help you know
see where where the line of fire is going. Right,
If anyone's ever watched any of those old like World
War two, World War two cockpit footage of of of

(18:57):
of machine gun fire. You know, you're seeing the tracers
the lights that mark which direction of the bullets are going.
Another common use for it apparently is in marking targets, so,
which would mean, you know, so you need some kind
of target flare, so you're trying to aim artillery or
something like that, you can mark the target on the
ground that you're trying to hit with white phosphorus apparently. Uh.

(19:19):
And then finally to create smoke screens, which would be
useful in hiding the maneuver of friendly troops. Yeah. So
basically comes down to how are you using it or
using it to illuminate or using it to obscure, or
are you using it in a way that is either
intentionally or or or nearly intentionally uh, incendiary against human

(19:41):
beings or or human infrastructure, using it to burn people
in buildings. Right, that does seem to be the main difference.
So the uses I mentioned have been more generally permitted,
but it is against international law to use white phosphorus
as an incendiary weapon, especially against civilians or in areas
where civilians are clustered. And this us I think leads
to disputes because they're like these controversial uses where the

(20:04):
forces who used it said well, we were using it
for one of these permitted reasons, and then their critics say, no,
you were using it as an incendiary weapon. Yeah. Yeah,
I remember. I grew up in a house so where
we know, we talked a lot about military technology, and
and my my dad always he always stressed the just
horrible nous of incendiary weapons, such as the flamethrower, which

(20:25):
on a video game can look pretty cool until you
think about what a flamethrower actually is and what a
horrible weapon it is. Uh. And likewise, phosphorus, I remember
him telling me that, like you've if you would have,
if you would have particles of phosphorus, like in your skin,
they would have to immerse your your like your arm
in water then to remove it. Uh, thus you know,

(20:47):
degating the flare ability of it when it's exposed to
oxygen or free atmospheric oxygen. Yeah, that that goes everything
I've read about phosphorus as a direct weapon is just
a toe total nightmare. But all this would come later.
We're fast forwarding a little bit with the phosphorus weapons,
because at first phosphorus, you know, when it first crept

(21:08):
out of the alchemist workshop, it was one of these
substances that clearly had a lot of potential and you
didn't have to be a war pig to see it,
because no, no, surely this is an element that would
enable one to produce instant fire, because that's what it does.
It can busts in the air itself. Yeah, what a
like eighty something degrease fahrenheit. I mean that that's that's unusual. Yeah,

(21:29):
like even in uh you know, I mean, because we're
talking about even like in a cold environment with minimal friction,
you would be able to reach that point. However, it
would take a good a hundred and fifty years after
its discovery for us to see really the beginnings of
of actual technology that utilized it. And this would be
um the pyro phosphorus fire carrier that came around. This

(21:53):
Whisney I explains, was quote a sealed glass or ampool
containing a finely divided pyro four powder free of phosphorus,
which ignited spontaneously when the tube was broken and the
contents scattered. And he adds that pyrophoric powers are chemicals
in finely powdered and reactive state which catch fire on
exposure to air. So yeah, so you'd have a sealed

(22:16):
capsule that you would rupture in order to either combine
things or just expose something to the air and instantly
create a flame. Which I don't know that that version
of the of the instant strike alite sounds a little
scarier than the normal match. Yeah. I was reaching about
a few who uh, really terrifying versions of this technology

(22:36):
that rolled out early on. So one was Wilhelm Homberg
created a mixture that could be sprinkled under dry cotton,
which would cause it to catch fire. Okay. Then Robert
Hare who eight had a version that again entailed a
sealed glass tube. But another, I think the scariest one
is known as Rosling's pyrophorus. And I couldn't find any

(23:00):
information on who Rosling is in this scenario, like what
their first name was, etcetera. But the description I ran
across is that it was the powder was packed on
top of tobacco in a pipe and you ignited it
by sucking air through it. I think rose Ling was
the uncle of molok. Yeah. Now, another one that comes

(23:21):
up is the phosphoric taper or the ethereal match, and
this was a sealed glass tube with wax paper and
phosphorus inside it, you'd break the tube, according to Whisney
at quote with the aid of the teeth or otherwise,
I've ready and withdrawal the phosphorus impregnated taper into the air. Um.

(23:41):
These were indeed not only were these dangerous, but they
were also pricey. So there so ultimately you have a
technology there's just not practical for everyday use for for
for two huge reasons. It costs too much and you
might blow your face off. Yeah. I think I've read
about at least a couple of matches along these lines
that were like kind of glass container that you were

(24:02):
the most people would rupture with their teeth and that
would start the fire. Yeah. Yeah, that even without things
blowing up, you're breaking the glass cylinder with your teeth,
which just that alone gives me the all over us. Now.
There were some other advancements made in fire creation technology
that are worth at least touching on. One came from
Johann Wolfgang Doberiner, who lives seventeen through eighteen forty nine UM,

(24:26):
and he was a German chemist who in eighteen three
created what some dubbed the first lighter, the Doberinos lamp,
which It's also known as a like a hydrogen lighter.
Hydrogen produced from Z passes through a jet with sulfuric
acid over spongy platinum on a platinum wire. The gas ignights,

(24:47):
producing a flame. So the sponge here catalyzes a reaction
with oxygen heats the catalyst, igniting the hydrogen. Uh. This,
I've seen pictures of it. It It does. It looks kind
of like a I mean, it looks like a lamp.
If you were just solid setting on a shelf in
an antique story, might think it looks kind of neat,
but it might not realize like what it is. But

(25:07):
these apparently had a good hundred year run as being
a good way of producing flame. Yeah. If I were
just looking at this, I would not guess it was
something that produced flame. I would guess that it was
a lamp of some kind, something that carried for Yeah,
it just at first glance, it just looks like a lamp.
Another fire technology innovation at the time worth mentioning is

(25:28):
the pneumatic tinder box, also known as a light syringe
or a fire piston. Now, it depended on the rapid
stroke of a piston to generate heat to ignite tinder
and interestling enough, this is one of these inventions that
that emerged in Europe around that time, but essentially was

(25:49):
a much older Southeast Asian invention, which is, you know,
to say that the technique certainly shows up their first
hundreds of years earlier, but it's unclear if into what
extent this directly influenced European fire pistons or it's just
you know, much later, Uh, Europeans got around to it
through other technological roundabouts. You know. One thing I'm really

(26:11):
picking up on from these past couple of episodes is
the general impression that fire creation technology gets around fast. Yeah.
I mean it basically comes down to the fact that
any human culture is going to need it, like it
is such an important part of of of the human experience,
Like you need to be able to create fire. And

(26:32):
so if it's a new kind of match like that
that's going to spread, if it's a new element, You're
only gonna be able to keep that a secret for
so long because the potential there is just too high. Alright,
So we've talked about chemicals, elements, friction. I think you
can see where this is going. Maybe we need to
take a break and then we come back, we can
talk about the invention of the friction match. All all right,

(27:00):
we're back, We're finally here. We were reaching the point
where something more or less like the modern match is possible. Right,
So the invention of the friction match, the match that
you like by striking it across the surface, is often
credited to a single individual, a British chemist named John Walker,
who lived in the nineteenth century in a town called

(27:22):
Stockton on Tees, which is in County Durham up in
northern England. Now I've come across a few sort of
conflicting claims of primacy, though most sources site Walker. But
for example, there is a nineteen twenty two Dictionary of
Applied Chemistry written by the prolific British chemists Sir Thomas
Edward Thorpe, and it claims quote in eighteen sixteen, friction

(27:45):
matches tipped with a composition containing phosphorus are stated to
have been manufactured in Paris by a friend. Sois de Rone,
who by Gentle and others, is regarded as the first
maker of the phosphorus friction match. But I'm sure exactly
what to do with claims like this, because pretty much
all modern sources I can find give the credit to Walker. Uh,

(28:07):
the Walker wouldn't create his invention until later in the
eighteen twenties, So this proceeds Walker by at least ten years.
And Thorpe himself does claim that Walker invented the first
quote practical and useful matches ignitable by friction. Uh, So
I guess he's saying that maybe that, according to Thorpe,
at least somebody else in France created a friction match earlier,

(28:29):
but it was not practical and useful enough to count.
And that kind of raises a general question, like when
we give somebody credit for an invention, how impractical does
a version of an invention need to be before it
doesn't count at all? Right? Right? Yeah, And we we
discussed this a little bit, and we discussed this time
and time again on the show. Really, but it came
up when we were discussing cocktails with with Jeff Beach

(28:53):
von Berry, Like, if it's one thing to be able
to make the cocktail in your home kitchen, another to
be able to serve it. It's one thing to be
able to create something like a match in your workshop,
but to produce it on scale to be able to
actually uh get it out. There is a dependable way
of sparking a flame. Yeah, and Thorpe doesn't really go
into more details. So I don't know what exactly was

(29:14):
so impracticable about Francois Drone's friction match, but it sounds
like it it didn't work very well, or at least
according to Thorpe's diagnosis here. Um so, so here we're
left with John Walker. He's the one who almost always
gets the credit. He was born in seventy one. I
was reading a blog post about him by Andrew Haynes
for The Pharmaceutical Journal, and it described Walker's father as

(29:37):
a grocer, a draper, and a druggist, just a lot
of jobs. John was the third son in the family
and originally he was on the road to become a surgeon,
which was of course a very exciting road to occupy
at this time and place. You know, think late eighteenth
century in northern England. He's probably pretty close to the
medical colleges of Scotland. Uh see our episodes about the

(29:59):
Casket from last October if you want more wonderful medical
mischief of that time and place. But so he served
an apprenticeship with the town's head surgeon, and he was
eventually appointed an assistant surgeon in the town. But John
Walker had a bit of a problem with this career path.
He was reportedly quite squeamish and he could not stomach
the sight of blood and all those gaping holes in

(30:22):
human bodies, and ultimately this led him to quit his
career path and say, I just can't do surgery. Wow,
that's understandable. That would have been a tough hurdle to
get over, especially at that time. Yeah, So he reversed course.
He left surgery behind and he went back to study
pharmacy in Durham and in York. And after he completed
his education in pharmacy, he moved back home and in

(30:43):
eighteen nineteen he opened his own whatever you would want
to call it for this period, an apothecary, a pharmacy shop, uh,
that kind of business in Stockton on Tees, his hometown.
So friction matches are another one of these inventions that
is at least alleged to have been partially discovered by accident.
So how did this work? Well, John Walker already had

(31:06):
an interest in fire production and in practical chemistry and
sometime in the eighteen twenties, he started creating and selling
a mixture of potassium chlorate and antimony sulfide bound together
with gum arabic and he called this flammable product percussion powder.
So he's already making a flammable mixture the on a

(31:29):
regular basis and selling it in his Druggist shop. But
one day in eighteen six, John Walker was preparing a
mixture of the percussion powder, and while mixing the chemicals together,
he used a little wooden stick to stir them, which
of course became coated at one end in this lighting fluid.
And the story goes that he happened to scrape this
stick across the rough stone of his hearth, and then

(31:53):
the chemical coded part burst into flames. Now, this is
the kind of accidental discovery that could if situations were
just right or just wrong enough, perhaps it could well
be the last discovery you make. It could be a
really um, a really final Eureka movement. Uh yeah, you say,
if it was too close to the rest of his powder,

(32:13):
he had a big mass of it there or something.
But a Walker immediately knew that he had an important
new product on hand, one that could easily produce fire
from no original fire with little effort, and it was
very portable to boot. So on April seven, seven we
know from his diaries that was the day he began
selling these early strike matches in his pharmacy under the

(32:35):
name friction Lights. Now, the ones he sold were made
by hand out of first cardboard and later little wooden splints.
I read that he apparently hired people from the town
to just sit around cutting up tiny little wooden splints
for him, and then he would coat the ends of
them in potassium chloride antimony sulfide bound together with gum arabic.

(32:57):
And he sold the friction lights with a piece of
glass paper or sand paper, and the instructions were to
fold the sand paper over the head of the match
and then pull the stick out sharply. Now the sand
paper in this case did not have any special chemical
properties of its own. It was just regular sandpaper. It
was just there to be a very rough surface to
provide the heat from the friction when striking, because there's

(33:21):
not necessarily going to be a brick on hand to
strike it off right, and the friction would ignite the
dried paste and then you would have your flame. But
Walker did not acquire a patent on his process, and
this turned out the worse for him. Within just a
few years, other producers and you know, almost immediately just
swooped in began selling copycats. Some of the best known

(33:43):
friction like copycats were produced by A Samuel Jones of London,
and these friction matches were known at the time as Lucifers.
Apparently they had more not just the antimony sulfide, but
they had a more direct sulfur content. They might have
just been sulfur, and the name Lucifer has something to
do with that. The fact that they were sulfur dipped

(34:04):
is from the sulfur aus smell that would be released
when you ignited it, so it would it would smell
like the fires of hell when you're like one of
these matches, the Brimstone Tenders uh. And then there were
other copycats also who were soon on the market. Thorpe
mentioned sulfur dipped competitors sold in London by Jones competitors
Geff Watts uh and by Richard Bell and Company, which

(34:26):
sold theirs as improved Lucifer's. Improved Lucifer's that sounds like
a Redemption arc for the for the Fallen Angel. Yeah uh,
And apparently John Walker himself was not a fan of
the name Lucifer's Matches. He didn't like it. I don't
know if that was if that was him being precious
about his invention, or if he was a pious man

(34:46):
or what interesting, but for some reason he wasn't into
that it. Also, it is kind of a clunky name, right.
It's one thing to say, hey, do you have a light?
Do you have a match? Excuse me? So, do you
have any Lucifers on your person? I mean, that's why
go with three syllables when you when all you need
is one. Just call them Devil's devil would work? Or
you again, just a light? A match like the Summit

(35:08):
rolls off the tongue a lot easier. Hast thou a
prince of darkness in my pocket? Do you have a
spare belzebub to spare with me? A mephistuff LEAs perhaps? Yeah?
I mean, once you get to do a bunch of
clunky devil names, easier just to go back to the light.
So I've got a really funny but wait, well that
does remind me that, of course, the other part of

(35:28):
the name is Lucifer means bringer of light, of course
it does. Yeah. So it is a great name. It's
a double yeah. It is also a little clunkey. Yeah.
Uh So there's a great addendum to this story just
happened to come across. So in the English town of
Stockton on Tees, this town in northern England that John
Walker is from where the friction match was invented, there

(35:49):
is a statue to honor John Walker. It was erected
in nineteen seventy seven, which would have been the one
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first year that he
sold the matches. Remember that was eighty seven. But there's
a twist I was reading about in uh in the
Times of London. Apparently in nineteen ninety the Borough Council

(36:10):
of Stockton on Tees found out that the town statue
of John Walker was based on the likeness of the
wrong John Walker. It had been made from an etching
of a London actor named John Walker, who never invented anything,
as far as we know, never even visited Stockton on Tees.
And after they found this out, they kept it a
secret until just a few years ago when they were

(36:33):
a number. There were some newspaper articles that came out
about it. It would be like, if you know, centuries
from now, uh, someone decided to to to create a
statue to honor the physicist Brian Cox, and but instead
of the dashing scientist, they found h an image of
the you know, perhaps less dashing but certainly charismatic act

(36:57):
Brian Dare you how I mean? Dare you? Skill of
the actor Brian cots Okay when his younger years, I
imagine he was he was more dashing, but generally he
is uh, I would say he is. He has more
of a severe look to modern audiences, people who know
him from like Man Hunter On. In fact, that may
be the earliest film I can remember seeing with with

(37:19):
with him in it. I really don't have any familiarity
with the younger Brian Cox. He's got a small role
in the early seventies film Nicholas and Alexandra about the
last family of the Romanovs, in which he plays Trotsky.
Is he recognizable. I don't know. It's been a long
time since I saw the movie, but but he's in
there all right. I just mainly associating with like a
fearsome bear of a man um, you know, with a

(37:43):
very very haggard look and voice, um, very different from
the physicist. So did they back to this the statue
though of John Walker? Did they fix it? Did they?
Haven't read anything about fixing. I don't know. I mean,
when you're dealing I do not know the resolution of
this story. I just know it was the wrong guy.
I mean, I guess it's when you're dealing with historical

(38:04):
figures of of this caliber. I mean, what does it matter, right?
I mean, at least we're remembering their name and their accomplishments,
even if we essentially have an actor playing them in
the statue. What if that statue of RoboCop in Detroit
was based on the wrong RoboCop. Oh, No, that would
be blasphemous. Yeah, like like the RoboCop three RoboCop was it? Wait?

(38:26):
Was it a different actor in RoboCop three? I'm sure
it was, yeah, Or the RoboCop the TV show RoboCop.
It just would not be the same. Or the reboot RoboCop. Oh,
that would be the worst. That reboot that was not good.
I haven't seen it. Well, Actually it was one of
those movies I had complex thoughts about it. It felt
like a movie that might have been a better movie

(38:47):
in an earlier draft of the script, but the script
had been rewritten to make it worse. That that was
my intuition. Okay, that sounds about right. Um, back to
two matches. Your talking about the use of the sand
paper and folding it over. This brings back so many
memories of of using matches as as a kid um

(39:09):
and sort of getting comfortable with them. Because a match,
especially if you're told to be careful with matches enough,
it can be intimidating to strike one um, especially if
you're using the little cardboard matches that are in the
little cardboard folding apparatus. Uh you know those. You sometimes
have to get your fingernails rather close, perhaps uncomfortably close

(39:29):
to the tip of the match to do the strike,
and then you have to sort of backtrack really quickly.
Uh and it might get a little warm on the
tips of your fingers and uh and and sometimes you're
tempted to do the fold over method, which can result
in just destroying a match because you might be pinching
it to pull the head off. You'll pull the head off,
or it's just there's there's kind of like a and

(39:50):
then it's gone funny enough, I know the exact minute
mechanical complaint you're talking about. Uh. And then likewise, and
sometimes you'd have like the big box of matches, you know,
like a proper fireplace box of matches, and you would
use it so much that the strike plate would be
the sand paper area would be worn down where you
couldn't even effectively strike anything anymore. Um. And and then

(40:14):
there were people would have various tricks too, right, I
mean you'd see people who could do the finger the
fingernail um striking of the match, or use it a
belt buckle or a brick or something. I never had
any luck with any extracurricular striking records. That's like pony
Boy and Dally kind of stuff. Plus I'm thinking, like
your fingernail, that always seemed a little dangerous, Like couldn't

(40:35):
you risk getting a little um like match head up
underneath your fingernail? That just doesn't sound pleasant. Real Greece
is too tough to care about that probably, So still
it beats biting through a glass cylinder right a one degree? Alright,
So I think we're gonna have to call this episode there,
but we're gonna be back for one more part of
our exploration of matches next time, where we will explore

(40:58):
more of the role of phosphorus and match manufacturing and
the safety match. All right. In the meantime, if you
want to check out other episodes of Invention, you can
find us anywhere you get your podcasts. If you go
to invention pod dot com, that'll shoot you over to
the I heart page for the show. Wherever you get
the show. All we ask is subscribe, rate review. These

(41:19):
are all things you can do to help out the show. Also,
just tell a friend spread the word like like a fire,
spread from one match head to another. As a child
plays through an entire box of matches in their backyard
without their parents knowledge. I know we keep referencing this.
By the way, if small children are listening, don't play
with matches kids. I know it is fun, but you know,
yes we were. We were reminiscing on playing with matches,

(41:42):
but even at the time it felt very dangerous and
I guess that's the thrill of it, right, But yes,
don't play with matches. Um, they they fire, they catch fire.
They can catch fire. With fire comes great responsibility. All right, huge,
thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us

(42:03):
with feedback on this episode, UH, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hi, you can
email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention
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