Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-03-24 | Page 6 | Miscellany

I Miscellany Matches. Date Back to Fourteenth Century. Matches as an article of common use go back no further than the fourteenth century, when, in tho form of a wick of molten wax or of cotton thread, they were first conveyed to the flame of a lamp or candle, the term "match" being applied to any object possessed of the duality of carrying fire. In the use of early firearms a match consisted of a cord of hemp or similar material treated with nitro so that it continued to smolder after it had been ignited. The match was attached to the cock of the musket and brought down by the action of the trigger on the powder pow-der priming. The introduction of the modern type nr match is. perhaps, due to Godfrey TTawkwitz, who iff 1680, under the direction direc-tion of Robert Boyle, inventor of the. present form of phosphorus, used small pieces of that substance. Ignited by friction, fric-tion, to light splints of wood. But the complicated and cumbrous character of I his device rendered its general use impossible im-possible so that until the beginning of the nineteenth century flint and steel rubbed against tinder boxes or sulphur-tipped sulphur-tipped splints of w-ood were the only means of obtaining fire for domestic and other purposes, examples of tins method of "lighting the fire" being seen in the illustration of some nf the works of Fielding, Smollet and Charles I-ever. The first big step toward the present-day present-day tvpe of match was. however, taken in the year lSOS. when Henri Chancel, chief assistant to Themird. the famous French chemist, invented an elaborate apparatus consisting of a small bottle of asbestos and strong sulphuric aclrl with accompanying wood spllnls which were coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of chloride of potash and sugar the mulches, brought Into contact con-tact with the sulphuric acid In the bottle bot-tle thus Immediately bursting Into flame. Twentv-two vears Inter .John Walkor, an obscure druegist of Stockton-on-Tees. Durham, inlroduced the first match to he lighted bv friction and known as the Congrevc. This match, named after Sir William Congreve, the inventor of the rocket which bears his name, consisted of wooden splints of sticks on cardboard coaled with sulnhur and tipped with a mixture of sulphide o antimony, chlorate of potash and gum. Kach hox cost 5 cents and carried with it a folded piece of glass paper, the halves of which were pressed tlghllv together with one hand while the match was drawn sharply between be-tween them with the other. Three years later came the phosphorus friction match, the Invention or which Is credited to J. rreschei- of Vienna, who In a small Taelorv on Hie outskirts of the city obscurely manufactured phosphorus match fuses. Contemporaneously Frederick Fred-erick Moldenhauer of Darmstadt began the preparation of an almost similar form of match. The danger attendant on the use of the while or yellow phosphorus illustrated in the crop of fatal accidents, suicides and in several cases murder by phosphorus phosphor-us poisoning which immediately followed t lie production of l he new form of match, led to the innocuous and now familiar red or amorphous phosphorus introduced in 1S52 by J. E. Lungstorm of Sweden and which has with more or less variation remained re-mained in use to this day. New York World.