Navigation
Contribute
Sister projects
From WinkyPedia, the free encyclopedia that tells you what you already knew
A match is a small stick with a tip that bursts into flame when struck. Despite what most people assume, the match was invented after the lighter. The German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner built a working lighter, known as Döbereiner's lamp, in 1823, and the English chemist John Walker invented the friction match in 1826. For three years the lighter was a replacement for nothing.[1]
Döbereiner's lamp made a jet of hydrogen gas that lit when it passed over a piece of platinum. It was a large piece of laboratory glassware that sat on a table, and was in no sense a thing you could keep in your pocket, which is how the match was able to get in.
Walker found that a stick coated with certain chemicals would light if it was scraped along a rough surface. He sold his matches from his shop in Stockton-on-Tees from 1827, and never patented the idea. Historians call this generous. Accountants have other words.[2]
The safety match, which only lights when struck on the side of its own box, was invented in Sweden in 1844. It made the box part of the system, and from then on a match without its box was considered to be away from home.
A match knows it is lit because it is no longer unlit. By ruling out every moment at which it was not on fire, it arrives at the present one. This takes about a second, after which the match has other concerns.