Matches

What methods didn’t people use for making fire before the matches appeared! Cavemen used to carve sparkles out of flint hoping to set on fire dry leaves.  

Thousand years after, the Romans were not much advanced in the fire making business. They knocked stones together trying to set on fire a sulfur covered wood chip with the spark.

People rubbed wooden surfaces against each other, knocked sparks with flint, tried to catch sun rays through a piece of glass. And as they would succeed – they would carefully keep burning coal in clay pots.

It was only at the end of the 18th century things got easier – as Claude Bertollet, a French chemist received a substance, which was later called Bertollet Salt. This way the first dip- matches appeared in Europe in 1805: thin wood chips, rubbed with the Bertollet Salt, which caught fire being immersed into a concentrated solution of sulfuric acid.  

The world owes invention of the first “dry” matches to an English chemist and pharmacist John Walker. In 1827 he discovered that if to dip a wooden chip into a mixture of antimony sulfide, Berthollet salt and gummiarabika (it is a viscous liquid exuded by acacia) and dry it all on an open air, such stick, rubbed against sandpaper ignites instantly.

The necessity to carry a bottle of sulfuric acid at all times was dashed accordingly. Walker established a small enterprise to produce his matches, packed into wooden boxes 100 pieces in each. He didn’t make big money on this invention though. Besides the matches had a vicious odor. 

Walker had many followers who developed his business. They tried to improve the matches – some of them were harmful to human health, others – smoldered for a long time which resulted in fires.

Modern matches do not contain sulfur and chlorine - instead paraffin and non- chlorine oxidants are used.