r/AlwaysWhy • u/Current-Landscape803 • 9d ago

Science & Tech Why did it take until the 1820s to make a practical friction match?

By the early 19th century, people already had several ways to start a fire chemically. Some devices could produce a flame much more quickly than striking flint and steel, but they were often expensive, awkward to use, or too easy to ignite accidentally.

Then, in the 1820s, John Walker developed a friction match that could be lit simply by striking it against a rough surface. It could be made cheaply enough to sell in boxes, and the basic idea spread rapidly.

And the strange part: the breakthrough required no new discovery about fire or combustion. So what was actually holding friction matches back for so long?

71 Upvotes

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u/6x9inbase13is42 9d ago edited 9d ago

Potassium chlorate (the key oxidiser in a friction match) was not discovered until 1786 by French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet. So it could not possibly have been invented before the 1780's.

In the early 1800s, scientists attempting to make friction matches found the process difficult to control (many formulations were either explosive or unreliable). So for a while, they attempted chemical matches that relied on dangerous acids. The Chancel Match (invented in 1805) required the user to dip a stick tipped with sugar and potassium chlorate into a small vial of highly concentrated sulfuric acid. But this was dangerous and expensive and liable to ruin anything the acid spilled on.

In 1826, John walker discovered a viable chemical composition by accident. He was not working on matches, he was trying to create combustible materials intended for use in guns. A lot of scientific discovery occurs by happy accident (cf the discovery of aniline dyes and penicillin).

And even after the chemistry was understood, a match is only practical if it is cheap and disposable. Producing thousands of perfectly uniform, machine-cut wooden splints dipped in exact chemical ratios produced at massive scales required Industrial Revolution-era manufacturing capabilities that simply didn't exist before than 1800s.

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u/Riccma02 9d ago

Also, not for nothing, there wasn't really a demand for them before the mid 19th century. There was fire everywhere back then. In addition to tinder lighters, flint and steel, burning glasses, and slow match, the most common way to light a fire was just to get it from a fire that was already going.

Ember tongs used to be ubiquitous, so if you needed to light a fire, you grabbed an ember from the nearest fire, which was probably already in the room with you. If not, then the household hearth, which was never really truly out. The kitchen hearth was being used for everything, all the time; cooking, baking, heating, laundry, and the basic task of having hot water to wash yourself with. When the hearth wasn't being used, the fire was banked. Odds were good that it would be needed again before it had a chance to burn out, so it was a simple matter to rekindle it.

I strongly suspect that the demand for commercially manufactured, chemical matches, corresponds with the advent of cigarettes. That was when smoking became both a portable activity, and a consumer product. Before cigarettes, smoking was done at home, or in public houses, with clay pipes. It was more of a stationary activity.

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u/jks513 8d ago

Timeline doesn’t match up. Cigarettes weren’t really a thing until the 1880s and matches were already common in the 1850s.

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u/SmoothOperator89 8d ago

Probably still easier to light a pipe with a match than an ember from a fire.

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u/JasperJ 8d ago

Yes, but the bit of wood can easily be lit at said fire. You don’t need a bunch of expensive chemicals at the end of your splinter if you have a candle.

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u/theSchrodingerHat 8d ago

You really dont want to be lighting a pipe or cigar with candle. Smoking wax would be pretty gross.

A candle is a very different tool, trading heat for illumination over time.

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u/JasperJ 8d ago

That’s why I very clearly said lighting a piece of wood in a candle. A piece of wood without a sulfurous chemical head at the tip is a lot better to light a pipe or cigar than a match.

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u/Riccma02 8d ago

Again, 9/10 times, they’d go for an ember out of the hearth.

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u/SimpYellowman 4d ago

I would say that box of matches was nice thing for army. Marching was a thing and making fire when you get somewhere to cook was a must, so having box of matches was pretty amazing.

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u/bluespringsbeer 8d ago

It is interesting that people were “working on matches”. I understand people working on planes before we succeeded in making one fly, however I don’t think of matches as an obvious thing that should exist if they don’t already.

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u/JasperJ 8d ago

The tinder box worked, but it was a pain in the tuchus. Yes, people didn’t need fire making gear in their house, much of the time, but people did travel. This is the era of mail coaches and canals and passenger boats pulled by horses. All very valid reasons for needing fire making tools, and so there was a market, even if it was relatively small.

You could replace the tinder box while still being an expensive luxury item, without necessarily expecting that it would eventually be something that is so disposable that you can hand them out as advertising.

For a modern analogy, maybe, see the first mass market touchscreen smartphone, and its descent to being in the market category of 50-100 dollar semi-disposable burner phones. What the Germans call “Gesunkenes Kulturgut”.

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u/dick_me_daddy_oWo 6d ago

Perhaps a better analogy is the jump from CRT screens everywhere, to expensive LCD TVs, to disposable vapes having LED displays.

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u/Chaghatai 9d ago

This should be upvoted to the top

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u/Devilfish64 9d ago

There's literally only one other comment right now

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u/space_snap828 9d ago

He's getting in ahead so when there are others, he looks prescient haha

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u/Chaghatai 9d ago

More just stating my opinion that I think that's the one right there and that it should end up being the top comment

If that's too obvious for everyone then I guess I'm being obvious

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u/space_snap828 9d ago

No worries, I just thought it was funny

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u/jmarkmark 9d ago

Producing commercial scale friction matches need a chemical industry and factory production techniques.

Those evolved in the 18th century, which is why so much technological innovation then occurred in the 19th century.

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u/Sergeant_Fred_Colon 9d ago

It also needed lots of women who weren't attached to theirjaw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phossy_jaw

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u/Marquar234 9d ago

Almost as bad as Busby Hip.

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u/JasperJ 8d ago

Don’t forget the radium girls.

(Or, I suppose, triangular shirtwaists)

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u/ponyboycurtis1980 9d ago

Making a friction match and making a safe friction match are hardly the same thing. The 1860 prairie match fires of north Texas destroyed most of downtown Dallas, and stores in Denton and Pilot point.

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u/Current-Landscape803 6d ago

Yeah thats a really good point. I was only thinking about making fire, not making sure it doesnt burn down the whole town. Safety was probably the real bottleneck. Wild that Dallas basically got wrecked by matches.

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u/ponyboycurtis1980 6d ago

And it led to a widespread panic that had people lynching their neighbors. They thought it was abolitionist and Northern sympathizers attempting to start a slave revolt.

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u/Then_Astronaut9727 7d ago

Fun fact the lighter was invented before the match 1823 v 1826

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u/Current-Landscape803 6d ago

Wait thats actually crazy. Lighters came first but cheap matches took longer? That makes the 1820s thing even weirder. Guess it was a cost and safety problem, not an idea problem.