Victoria University College

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

Victoria University College

SARAH ANNE RHODES FELLOWSHIP IN HOME SCIENCE FROM TINDER BOX TO MODERN' MATCHES It is a far cry from tlie tinder box used by our great-grandparents to tho match of to-day. While people were using such crude devices, chemists in practically every civilised country were searching for a compound that would ignite to make lire Experiments were both dangerous and expensive, but they continued year after year. Finally in 1826 John Walker, a druggist and surgeon’s assistant of Stockton-on-Teos, England, invented the friction match. Ho sold what he called “percussion powder” in his shop and this powder was a mixture of chlorate of potash and sulphide of antimony. Ono day ho hud an inspiration. Why not attach the powder to wooden splints by means of adhesive gum arabic, so that tho splints would ignite when drawn through a piece of folded sandpaper. Tho idea worked, Thus the friction match was invented.

The matches, or splints, ns they wero sometimes called, wero sold in neat littlo boxes with sandpaper enclosed. And although these first matches sputtered and crackled and their heads often flew off under the strain of the friction, still they marked a very groat advance in flre-making. This, though crude by comparison with tho modern match, was far superior to anything known up to that time. A few years after the invention of friction matches, a French student named Charles Sauria was watching his chemistry professor pour sulphur and chlorate of potash together. As the two chemicals flashed and cracked, Sauria begau to think of some possibilities. He went home to experiment with his chemicals, glass tubes and some pieces of pine wood. One day he rubbed the prepared end of his match on the wall where there happened to be a little phosphorus. Immediately it blazed and Sauria had discovered the principle of the phosphorus match. The process of development is still going on —and is, of course, far from finished. In genuine legendary fashion, the pine trees, often as high as two hundred feet, are felled, brought down by water flumes and floated to the sawmills. One tree will sometimes produce ns much as three thousand feet of lumber. After thirty years of manufacture, experiment and study it is possible to make literally hundreds of thousands of matches in forty minutes, whereas in the days of flint it probably took forty minu.tes to strike a spark from the flint as was necessary in using the tinder box.