Match

A match is a tool for starting a fire. It is usually made from a small wooden stick or a piece of stiff paper. One end of the match is covered with a special material that can catch fire when you rub, or strike, the match against a rough surface. This rubbing creates heat through friction, which makes the match light up.

Wooden matches are often sold in little boxes called matchboxes. Paper matches are sometimes cut into rows and stapled into small book-like packs known as matchbooks. The part of the match that burns is called the match “head.” It contains special ingredients mixed with a binder and is often colored so it’s easy to see.

There are two main kinds of matches. One type is called a safety match. These matches only light when struck on a special surface, usually found on the side of the matchbox. The other type is called a strike-anywhere match. These can light up when rubbed on almost any rough surface. Matches have been important tools for starting fires safely and easily for many years.

Etymology

The word match comes from an old French word mèche, which means the wick of a candle. Long ago, people used special cords soaked in chemicals to start fires, light guns, or set off explosive devices like dynamite. These cords could burn quickly or slowly. A slow match might burn about 30 cm (1 foot) each hour, while a quick match could burn much faster.

Today, we still see similar ideas in things like fuses used in pyrotechnics, and some old terms like black match and Bengal match are still used in fireworks. But now, when we say "match," we usually mean the small sticks we use to start a fire.

History

Early matches

A note in the scholar Tao Zongyi's book from around 1366 describes a form of sulfur taper or match. These were small pieces of pinewood soaked in sulfur, used by court ladies in 577 during a conquest. During the 10th century, Tao Gu's book stated that an ingenious man devised the system of soaking little sticks of pinewood with sulfur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire, they would burst into flame.

Around the time of Marco Polo's visit to China, such sulfur tapers were part of the products of Lin'an (now Hangzhou). They were known as "candle starters" or "little burners."

Chemical matches

Before matches, fires were sometimes lit using a burning glass to focus the sun on tinder, a method that only worked on sunny days. Another common method was igniting tinder with sparks produced by striking flint and steel, or by sharply increasing air pressure in a fire piston. Early work had been done by alchemist Hennig Brand, who discovered the flammable nature of phosphorus in 1669. Others continued these experiments in the 1680s with phosphorus and sulfur, but their efforts did not produce practical and inexpensive methods for generating fires.

The first modern, self-igniting match was invented in 1805 by Jean Chancel, assistant to Professor Louis Jacques Thénard of Paris. The head of the match consisted of a mixture of potassium chlorate, sulfur, gum arabic, and sugar. The match was ignited by dipping its tip in a small bottle filled with sulfuric acid. This kind of match was quite expensive and dangerous, so it was never widely adopted for everyday use.

This approach to match making was further refined in the following decades, culminating with the 'Promethean match' that was patented by Samuel Jones of London in 1828. His match consisted of a small glass capsule containing a chemical composition of sulfuric acid colored with indigo and coated on the exterior with potassium chlorate, all of which was wrapped up in rolls of paper. The immediate ignition of this particular form of a match was achieved by crushing the capsule with a pair of pliers, mixing and releasing the ingredients in order for it to become alight.

In London, similar matches meant for lighting cigars were introduced in 1849 by Heurtner who had a shop called the Lighthouse in the Strand. One version that he sold was called "Euperion" (sometimes "Empyrion") which was popular for kitchen use and nicknamed as "Hugh Perry", while another meant for outdoor use was called a "Vesuvian" or "flamer." The head was large and contained niter, charcoal and wood dust, and had a phosphorus tip. The handle was large and made of hardwood so as to burn vigorously and last for a while. Some even had glass stems. Both Vesuvians and Prometheans had a bulb of sulfuric acid at the tip which had to be broken to start the reaction.

In 1832, William Newton patented the "wax vesta" in England. It consisted of a wax stem that embedded cotton threads and had a tip of phosphorus. Variants known as "candle matches" were made by Savaresse and Merckel in 1836. John Hucks Stevens also patented a safety version of the friction match in 1839.

Friction matches

Chemical matches were unable to make the leap into mass production due to their expense, cumbersome nature, and inherent danger. An alternative method was to produce the ignition through friction produced by rubbing two rough surfaces together. Two early examples were produced in France. In 1810, Baron Cagniard de la Tour produced the "phosphorus bottle", which used a sulfur-infused taper to extract partially oxidized phosphorus from a vial, which then produced a flame when struck against any firm surface. Another was François Derosne's 1816 briquet phosphorique, which similarly used a sulfur-tipped taper to scrape a tube internally coated with phosphorus. Both proved inconvenient and unsafe.

The first commercially successful friction match was invented by John Walker, an chemist and pharmacist in Stockton-on-Tees, England. This may have occurred during experiments in 1826 but his sulphurata hyperoxygenata frict. were first recorded in a note on a sale upon credit on 7 April 1827. He changed the name to "friction lights" or "attrition lights" a few months later. He had developed a keen interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily, creating variations on Chancel's dipping matches to assist local hunters. Several chemical mixtures were already known that would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. Having mixed his percussion powder with a Chancel match, Walker found the resulting match ignited during an accidental strike against his hearth. He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery and started making friction matches, although he demurred from securing a royal patent, stating "I doubt not it will be a benefit to the public, so let them have it." He did not, however, make his own formulation public or even record it in his notes, such that it was necessary to later analyze his products to establish that they were wooden sticks 3 inches long by 1/6 inches wide by 1/20 inches high (7.6×0.4×0.1 cm) dipped in sulfur and tipped with a mixture of equal parts of antimony trisulfide and potassium chlorate bound to the wood with gumwater allowed to dry in place. The sulfur's unpleasant odor was improved by the addition of camphor. Walker's matches were stored in a tin cylinder that included a piece of sandpaper ("glass-paper"). To light each match, the paper was folded in half and the match drawn through it. From 1827–1829, Walker sold a few hundred sets of matches at the price of 1 shilling 2 pence for 100 matches and the tin or 1 shilling flat for 84 matches and the tin. These first matches were widely publicized by Michael Faraday's lectures in London in 1829 and by journal articles the same year. However, they remained dangerous, with lit fragments sometimes falling to the floor and burning carpets and dresses, prompting bans on their production or sale in France and Germany.

The Scottish inventor Sir Isaac Holden produced an improved version of Walker's match and demonstrated it to his class at Castle Academy in Reading, Berkshire, in 1829. Holden did not patent his invention either but Samuel Jones, the father of one of his students and a London chemist, quickly did and began commercializing a version of Holden's product throughout Britain as the "Promethean" or "lucifer match" (Latin: lucifer, "light-bearer"). Its popularity—and much lower price—prompted Walker to stop making his own formulation by 1830, while Richard Bell opened the first match factory in 1832 in London. Jones and Bell's lucifer matches were pirated in turn by Ezekial Byam in the United States. These matches continued to have unpleasant fumes, an unsteady flame, and could ignite explosively, sometimes throwing sparks a considerable distance. Nonetheless, they sold well and "lucifer" persisted as a genericized term for matches into the 20th century, with the song "Pack Up Your Troubles" including the lines "and smile, smile, smile while you’ve a lucifer to light your fag". Matches are still called "lucifers" in Dutch.

Charles Sauria, a chemistry student at the Collège de l'Arc in Dole, France, substituted white phosphorus for the antimony trisulfide in Walker, Holden, and Jones's matches in 1830 or January 1831. This formulation could light when struck against any surface, produced odorless toxic fumes, and needed to be stored in airtight metal containers to avoid accidental ignition. They quickly replaced the earlier sulfurous formulations. Sauria also did not patent his invention, which was marketed in Germany as "Congreves" after the English rocket pioneer William Congreve because of his management of the Imperial Continental Gas Association during the 1820s. This name became popular in Britain but they were more generally known in the United States as locofocos, which gave its name to a progressive faction of the Democratic Party. In 1832, Samuel Jones adapted his regular phosphorus match to also produce "fuzees", slower burning matches for use with cigars and pipes. The earliest American patent for the phosphorus friction match was granted in 1836 to Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts, while John Hucks Stevens pirated Jones's fuzees as "fusse cigar lights" in 1839.

From 1830 to 1890, the composition of matches remained largely unchanged, although some improvements were made. In 1843 William Ashgard replaced the sulfur with beeswax, reducing the pungency of the fumes. This was replaced by paraffin in 1862 by Charles W. Smith, resulting in what were called "parlor matches". From 1870, the end of the splint was fireproofed by impregnation with fire-retardant chemicals such as alum, sodium silicate, and other salts resulting in what was commonly called a "drunkard's match" that prevented the accidental burning of the user's fingers.

A noiseless match was invented in 1836 by the Hungarian János Irinyi, who was a student of chemistry. An unsuccessful experiment by his professor, Meissner, gave Irinyi the idea to replace potassium chlorate with lead dioxide in the head of the phosphorus match. He liquefied phosphorus in warm water and shook it in a glass vial, until the two liquids emulsified. He mixed the phosphorus with lead dioxide and gum arabic, poured the paste-like mass into a jar, and dipped the pine sticks into the mixture and let them dry. When he tried them that evening, all of them lit evenly. He sold the invention and production rights for these noiseless matches to István Rómer, a Hungarian pharmacist living in Vienna, for 60 florins (about 22.5 oz t of silver). As a match manufacturer, Rómer became rich, and Irinyi went on to publish articles and a textbook on chemistry, and founded several match factories.

Other advances were made for the mass manufacture of matches. By 1847, over a thousand people were employed in France in friction match manufacture. Early matches were made from blocks of wood with cuts separating the splints but leaving their bases attached. Later versions were made in the form of thin combs. The splints would be broken away from the comb when required.

Regulation of white phosphorus

Those involved in the manufacture of the new phosphorus matches were afflicted with phossy jaw and other bone disorders, and there was enough white phosphorus in one pack to kill a person. The earliest report of phosphorus necrosis was made in 1845 by Lorinser in Vienna, and a New York surgeon published a pamphlet with notes on nine cases.

Attempts were made to reduce the ill-effects on workers through the introduction of inspections and regulations. Anton Schrötter von Kristelli discovered in 1850 that heating white phosphorus at 250 °C in an inert atmosphere produced a red allotropic form, which did not fume in contact with air. It was suggested that this would make a suitable substitute in match manufacture although it was slightly more expensive. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, proved in 1898 that the addition of phosphorus sesquisulfide meant that the substance was not poisonous, that it could be used in a "strike-anywhere" match, and that the match heads were not explosive. British company Albright and Wilson was the first company to produce phosphorus sesquisulfide matches commercially. The company developed a safe means of making commercial quantities of phosphorus sesquisulfide in 1899 and started selling it to match manufacturers.

The serious effects of white phosphorus led many countries to ban its use. Finland prohibited the use of white phosphorus in 1872, followed by Denmark in 1874, France in 1897, Switzerland in 1898, and the Netherlands in 1901. An agreement, the Berne Convention, was reached at Bern, Switzerland, in September 1906, which banned the use of white phosphorus in matches. This required each country to pass laws prohibiting the use of white phosphorus in matches.

The United Kingdom passed the White Phosphorus Matches Prohibition Act 1908 (8 Edw. 7. c. 42) prohibiting its use in matches after 31 December 1910. The United States did not pass a law, but instead placed a "punitive tax" in 1913 on white phosphorus–based matches, one so high as to render their manufacture financially impractical, and Canada banned them in 1914. India and Japan banned them in 1919; China followed, banning them in 1925.

In 1901 Albright and Wilson started making phosphorus sesquisulfide at their Niagara Falls, New York plant for the US market, but American manufacturers continued to use white phosphorus matches. The Niagara Falls plant made them until 1910, when the United States Congress forbade the shipment of white phosphorus matches in interstate commerce.

Safety matches

In addition to the dangers of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches, its easy combustibility became a major issue. This led to the development of the "safety match", whose major innovation was the use of red phosphorus on a separate and specially-designed striking surface, rather than placement on the head of the match itself.

The idea of creating a specially designed striking surface was developed in 1844 by the Swede Gustaf Erik Pasch. Pasch patented the use of red phosphorus in the striking surface. He found that this could ignite heads that did not need to contain white phosphorus. Meanwhile, Arthur Albright developed an industrial process for large-scale manufacture of red phosphorus after Schrötter's discoveries became known. By 1851, his company was producing the substance by heating white phosphorus in a sealed pot at a specific temperature. He exhibited his red phosphorus at the 1851 Great Exhibition in The Crystal Palace in London. Johan Edvard Lundström and his younger brother Carl Frans Lundström (1823–1917) had started a large-scale match industry in Jönköping, Sweden around 1847, but the improved safety match was not introduced until the early 1850s. The Lundström brothers had obtained a sample of red phosphorus matches from Albright at the Great Exhibition, but had misplaced it and therefore they did not try the matches until just before the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris, when they found that the matches were still usable. In 1858 their company produced around 12 million matchboxes.

The safety of true "safety matches" is derived from the separation of the reactive ingredients between a match head on the end of a splint and the special striking surface (in addition to the general safety benefits of replacing the white phosphorus with red phosphorus). The splint was also soaked in paraffin rather than sulfur to improve the flame's odor. The idea for separating the chemicals had been introduced in 1859 in the form of two-headed matches known in France as Allumettes Androgynes. These were sticks with one end made of potassium chlorate and the other of red phosphorus. There was, however, a risk of the heads rubbing each other accidentally in their box. Such dangers were removed when the striking surface was moved to the outside of the box. The development of a specialized matchbook with both matches and a striking surface occurred in the 1890s with the American Joshua Pusey, who sold his patent to the Diamond Match Company.

The Swedes long held a virtual worldwide monopoly on safety matches, with the industry mainly situated in Jönköping, by 1903 called Jönköpings & Vulcans Tändsticksfabriks AB today Swedish Match. In France, they sold the rights to their safety match patent to Coigent Père & Fils of Lyon. The British match manufacturer Bryant and May visited Jönköping in 1858 to try to obtain a supply of safety matches, but was unsuccessful. In 1862 it established its own factory and bought the rights for the British safety match patent from the Lundström brothers.

Modern matches

Modern matches have a special surface on the box and a special head on the match. The surface usually has glass powder, red phosphorus, carbon black, and other materials. The match head contains potassium chlorate, sulfur, starch, and other ingredients. When you strike a safety match, the materials on the head and the box mix and create a small explosion that starts a fire.

Matches that can be struck on any surface, using white phosphorus or phosphorus sesquisulfide, are still used for camping and outdoor activities. However, these matches are not allowed on airplanes because they are dangerous. Safety matches are also considered dangerous goods for transport but can sometimes be brought on airplanes if declared properly.

Storm matches

Storm matches, also called lifeboat matches or flare matches, are often found in survival kits. They look like regular matches but have a special coating. This coating helps them burn even in windy conditions. These matches can also work after getting wet, which makes them useful in tough situations.

Hobbyist collection

Main article: phillumeny

Some people like to collect things related to matches, such as match covers and matchbox labels. This hobby is called phillumeny.