Friction Matches Were a Boon to Those Lighting Fires–Not So Much to Matchmakers (2024)
Friction matches gave people the unprecedented ability to light fires quickly and efficiently, changing domestic arrangements and reducing the hours spent trying to light fires using more primitive means. But they also created unprecedented suffering for match-makers: One of the substances used in some of the first friction matches was white phosphorus. Prolonged exposure to it gave many workers the dread “phossy jaw.”
A British pharmacist named John Walker invented the match by accident on this day in 1826, according to Today in Science History. He was working on an experimental paste that might be used in guns. He had a breakthrough when he scraped the wooden instrument he was using to mix the substances in his paste, and it caught fire.
With a little work, writes Andrew Haynes for The Pharmaceutical Journal, Walker produced “a flammable paste made with antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate and gum arabic, into which he dipped cardboard strips coated with sulfur.” He started selling his “friction lights” to locals in April 1827 and they quickly took off.
Walker never patented his invention, writes Haynes, in part because “the burning sulfur coating would sometimes drop from the stick, with a risk of damage to flooring or the user’s clothing.” Despite the dangers, he was advised to patent the matches, according to the BBC, so it’s a bit unclear why he didn’t. His invention was quickly copied by Samuel Jones of London, who started selling “Lucifers” in 1829.
Experimentation with these new devices produced the first matches that included white phosphorus, an innovation that was quickly copied. Advances in matches continued over the 1830s and into the 1840s,according toEncyclopedia Britannica.
Match-making became a common trade across England. There were “hundreds of factories spread across the country,” writes Kristina Killgrove for Mental Floss. “For 12 to 16 hours a day, workers dipped treated wood into a phosphorus concoction, then dried and cut the sticks into matches.”
Like many other poorly paid and tedious factory jobs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, match makers were predominantly women and children, writes Killgrove. “Half the employees in this industry were kids who hadn’t even reached their teens. While working long hours indoors in a cramped, dark factory put these children at risk of contracting tuberculosis and getting rickets, matchstick making held a specific risk: phossy jaw.”
This gruesome and debilitating condition was caused by inhaling white phosphorus fumes during those long hours at the factory. “Approximately 11 percent of those exposed to phosphorus fumes developed ‘phossy jaw’ about five years after initial exposure, on average,” Killgrove writes.
The condition causes the bone in the jaw to die and teeth to decay, resulting in extreme suffering and sometimes the loss of the jaw. Although phossy jaw was far from the only side-effect of prolonged white phosphorus exposure, it became a visible symbol of the suffering caused by industrial chemicals in match plants. By 1892, writes Lowell J. Satre for the journal Victorian Studies, newspapers were investigating the plight of match workers.
A London reporter from The Star visited a victim of phossy jaw who had worked at a Salvation Army match factory. The woman, named Mrs. Fleet, “revealed that she had gotten the disease after working five years at the company,” Satrewrites. “After complaining of tooth and jaw ache, she had been sent home, had four teeth extracted, lost part of her jaw bone, and suffered the excruciating pain of the disease.” The smell of the dying bone, which eventually literally came out through her cheek, was so bad that her family couldn’t bear it.
After this, she was let go from the match company, which paid her for a few months. After that, she couldn’t get another job–no other match company would hire her, Satrewrites, because it would make them look bad to be associated with phossy jaw. “Historical records often compare sufferers of phossy jaw to people with leprosy because of their obvious physical disfigurement and the condition’s social stigma,” Killgrove writes.
Eventually match makers stopped using white phosphorus in matches,and it was outlawed in the United States in 1910.
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Kat Eschner||READ MORE
Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto.
Friction Matches Were a Boon to Those Lighting Fires–Not So Much to Matchmakers. Friction matches gave people the unprecedented ability to light fires quickly and efficiently, changing domestic arrangements and reducing the hours spent trying to light fires using more primitive means.
Why do we strike a match stick to light it up? The answer is friction. When you strike the match stick against the rough surface of the matchbox, the friction between the two surfaces generates heat.This heat causes the chemicals on the match head to react and ignite, producing a flame.
On the striking surface, there's powdered glass for friction and red phosphorus to ignite the flame. Now, the fun stuff-- striking a match against the powdered glass on the matchbox creates friction.
friction matches were invented by John Walker, an English chemist and apothecary, whose ledger of April 7, 1827, records the first sale of such matches. Walker's “Friction Lights” had tips coated with a potassium chloride–antimony sulfide paste, which ignited when scraped between a fold of sandpaper.
History. Before the invention of matches, percussion fire making was often used to start fires. Before the advent of steel, a variety of iron pyrite or marcasite was used with flint and other stones to produce a high-temperature spark that could be used to create fire.
Light does not experience friction in the sense of friction in classical mechanics. Interaction of light with matter is governed by quantum principles. Light can be scattered by material particle and frequency of light and hence energy of light can change ,but this loss of energy is not due to friction.
Triboluminescence is tribology phenomenon resulting in the generation of light through creating any frictional interaction between the materials. The term for this phenomenon comes from a combination of the greek word for “rub”, tribein, and the latin word for “light”, lumin.
Fire can be created through friction by rapidly grinding pieces of solid combustible material (such as wood) against each other (or a hard surface) which are heated and create an ember.
Friction matches gave people the unprecedented ability to light fires quickly and efficiently, changing domestic arrangements and reducing the hours spent trying to light fires using more primitive means.
Friction produces heat which damages the moving parts of a machine. Friction produces wear and tear on the contacting surfaces. This reduces the life of machine parts, tyres and shoe soles. A lot of energy is wasted due to friction to overcome it before moving.
Before the invention of matches, it was common to use specially made splinters tipped with some combustible substance, such as sulfur, to transfer a flame from one combustible source to another. An increased interest in chemistry led to experiments to produce fire by direct means on this splinter.
Lucifers were quickly replaced after 1830 by matches made according to the process devised by Frenchman Charles Sauria, who substituted white phosphorus for the antimony sulfide.
In 1826, John Walker, a chemist in Stockton on Tees, discovered through lucky accident that a stick coated with chemicals burst into flame when scraped across his hearth at home. He went on to invent the first friction match.
When you strike flint and steel together (technique (a) or (b) below) you may get "sparks." "Sparks"are tiny burning pieces of steel (iron) that have been shaved from the steel by the sharp edge of the "flint" (remember that flint is HARDER than steel!).
High demand long time over a very led to mass-scale production(in order to meet supplies), thereby less prices. Less Cost of Production: A safety-match needs wood, red-phosphorus, some other chemicals in trace amounts and paper. All of these are cheap. They have not been cheap since time immemorial.
One of the oldest and most widespread methods of fire-making is by using tinder, flint, and steel. Even 'Ötzi', the natural mummy of a man who lived 5300 years ago in the Ötztal Alps in Austria, was found with flint, iron pyrites, and a collection of different plants for tinder.
The above statement is True. When we strike a match stick across the rough surface of the matchbox, it produces heat. This ignites the combustible compound present on the stick and gets lighted with the help of oxygen present in the air. The type of friction produced is Sliding friction.
If the match is struck against the striking surface, the friction causes the match to heat up. A small amount of the red phosphorus on the friction surface is converted into white phosphorus. The heat ignites the phosphorus that has reached the match head of the match when rubbing.
This friction generates heat, which in turn ignites the chemicals present on the matchstick head, causing it to catch fire. The type of friction responsible for this process is called **kinetic friction** or **sliding friction**.
Introduction: My name is Greg Kuvalis, I am a witty, spotless, beautiful, charming, delightful, thankful, beautiful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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