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Passage One:
A
spark, a flint: How fire leapt to life
The control of fire was the first and
perhaps greatest of humanity’
s steps
towards a
life-enhancing technology
To early man, fire was a
divine gift randomly delivered in the form of
lightning, forest
fire
or
burning
lava.
Unable
to
make
flame
for
themselves,
the
earliest
peoples
probably stored fire by
keeping slow
burning logs
alight
or by
carrying
charcoal
in
pots.
How and where man learnt
how to produce flame at will is unknown. It was
probably
a secondary invention,
accidentally made during tool-making operations
with wood or
stone.
Studies
of
primitive
societies
suggest
that
the
earliest
method
of
making
fire
was through friction.
European peasants would insert a wooden drill in a
round hole
and
rotate
it
briskly
between
their
palms.
This
process
could
be
speeded
up
by
wrapping a cord around the drill and
pulling on each end.
The
Ancient Greeks used lenses or concave mirrors to
concentrate the sun’s rays and
burning glasses were also used by
Mexican Aztecs and the Chinese.
Percussion methods of firelighting date
back to
Paleolithic times, when some
Stone
Age
tool-makers
discovered
that
chipping
flints
produced
sparks.
The
technique
became
more
efficient
after
the
discovery
of
iron,
about
5000
years
ago
In
Arctic
North America, the
Eskimos produced a slow-burning spark by striking
quartz against
iron pyrites, a compound
that contains sulphur. The Chinese lit their fires
by striking
porcelain with bamboo. In
Europe, the combination of steel, flint and tinder
remained
the main method of
firelighting until the mid 19th century.
Fire-lighting was
revolutionised by the discovery of phosphorus,
isolated in 1669 by a
German
alchemist
try
ing
to
transmute
silver
into
gold.
Impressed
by
the
element’s
combustibility,
several
17th
century
chemists
used
it
to
manufacture
fire-lighting
devices, but the results were
dangerously inflammable. With phosphorus costing
the
equivalent of several hundred
pounds per ounce, the first matches were
expensive.
The
quest
for
a
practical
match
really
began
after
1781
when
a
group
of
French
chemists came up with
the
Phosphoric Candle
or
Ethereal Match
, a sealed
glass tube
containing
a
twist of paper tipped with phosphorus. When the
tube was
broken, air
rushed
in, causing the phosphorus to self-combust. An
even more hazardous device,
popular in
America, was the
Instantaneous Light
Box
—
a bottle filled with
sulphuric
acid into which splints
treated with chemicals were dipped.
The first matches resembling those used
today were made in 1827 by John Walker, an
English
pharmacist
who
borrowed
the
formula
from
a
military
rocket-maker
called
Congreve. Costing a
shilling a box, Congreves were splints coated with
sulphur and
tipped
with
potassium
chlorate.
To
light
them,
the
user
drew
them
quickly
through
folded glass paper.
Walker never patented his
invention, and three years later it was copied by
a Samuel
Jones,
who
marketed
his
product
as
Lucifers
.
About
the
same
time,
a
French
chemistry
student
called
Charles
Sauria
produced
the
first
“strike
-
anywhere”
match
by
substituting
white
phosphorus
for
the
potassium
chlorate
in
the
Walker
formula.
However,
since
white
phosphorus
is
a
deadly
poison,
from
1845
match-makers
exposed
to
its
fumes
succumbed
to
necrosis,
a
disease
that
eats
away
jaw-bones.
It
wasn’t until 1906 that
the substance was eventually banned.
That was 62 years after a
Swedish chemist called Pasch had discovered non-
toxic red
or
amorphous
phosphorus,
a
development
exploited
commercially
by
Pasch’s
compatriot J E
Lundstrom in 1885. Lundstrom’s safety matches were
safe because the
red phosphorus was
non-toxic; it was painted on to the striking
surface instead of the
match
tip,
which
contained
potassium
chlorate
with
a
relatively
high
ignition
temperature of 182
degrees centigrade.
America
lagged behind
Europe in
match technology
and safety
standards.
It wasn’t
until
1900
that
the
Diamond
Match
Company
bought
a
French
patent
for
safety
matches
—
but the formula did not
work properly in the different climatic conditions
prevailing in America and it was
another 11 years before scientists finally adapted
the
French patent for the US.