A chemist standing by his hearth fumbles with a stick

The ability to control fire is one of the features that separates humankind from the rest of our fellow life forms on the planet, along with a desire to mask our own body odour, and a tendency to misspell ‘broccoli’.

Although a very primitive pinewood match impregnated with sulphur was possibly in use as far back as the sixth century in China, and would have been on sale when Marco Polo visited in the 1270s, being able to carry around an effective means of producing an instant fire was something of a holy grail for chemists working in Europe. It had taken until the 17th century for them to work out that a mixture of phosphorous and sulphur produced a good fire-starter. The problem with starting one’s fire with this compound came in containing it so that you did not set fire to yourself or anything in the vicinity.

Various chemical fire-starters were produced in the early decades of the 19th century. These involved the user embarking on procedures such as dipping sulphur-tipped matches into phosphorous; smashing tiny bulbs of sulphuric acid in order to start a reaction with a phosphorous-headed stick; or other similar courses of action. Aside from being manifestly dangerous, they were also expensive.

Remarkably, it wasn’t until 1826 – when the Industrial Revolution was already into its eighth decade, that the problem was solved, and only then because of an accident. The man who had it was John Walker, a chemist from Stockton-on-Tees, a town that was rocketing to fame at the time as one of the termini of the world’s first public railway line. The mishap occurred when he was mixing up a potion of chlorate of potash, antimony sulphide, starch and gum.

There is some uncertainty as to the precise nature of the happy accident that brought fire from this concoction. The popular tale is that Walker had stuck a stick into it, presumably to stir the mixture, and was then attempting to clean the stick by wiping it on some rough surface or other when the friction caused it to burst into flames. The truth seems more likely, as reported by the Gateshead Observer in 1852 that, ‘By the accidental friction on the hearth of a match dipped in the mixture, a light was obtained. The hint was not thrown away.’ That article was written 26 years after the event, but it is the closest to a contemporary report we have.

The chemist knew that Fortune had smiled upon him, and by 1827 he had started selling his friction matches under the brand name ‘Congreves’ (taking the name from a rocket invented by Sir William Congreve). Each box contained 50 cardboard matches and a piece of sandpaper on which they could be struck – all for the price of a shilling.

Matches have been through many more developments since. The use of white phosphorous was supposed to be an improvement on Walker’s formula when it was used in place of antimony sulphide, but it had deeply unpleasant side effects, including bone disorders, for those manufacturing them. This led to a strike in 1888 at Bryant and May factories by London ‘match girls’.

Shockingly, there had been no need to produce matches using white phosphorous for decades, since the ‘safety match’ had been invented in 1844 by the Swede Gustav Erik Pasch. He created a match without white phosphorous and had replaced the usual sandpaper supplied for striking a match with a rough surface containing the harmless red phosphorous. The matches themselves would not ignite by ordinary friction or by rubbing against each other, but when the match-head was flicked across the red phosphorous, the chemical reaction combined with the friction ignited a flame. Red phosphorous is still typically used on the striking surface of modern matchboxes.

John Walker, for reasons unknown, did not bother to patent his idea – though, since his matches gained a reputation for sending gobbets of flaming chemicals about the place when struck (leading to bans in France and Germany) it may have been just as well. It did mean, however, that others who came after him were able to improve on his lucky strike, which has culminated in the relatively safe and effective matches we have today.