Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/657

Rh MATCHES 625 fall among the tinder, which consisted of carbonized frag ments of cotton and linen ; the entire mass of the tinder was set into a glow, developing sufficient heat to ignite the sulphur with which the matches were tipped, and thereby the splints themselves were set on fire. Instead of tinder, match-paper or touch-paper, a thick bibulous paper impreg nated with saltpetre (nitrate of potash), and amadou or German tinder, a thick leathery and porous preparation from the fungus Polyporus fomentarius, were often used. It was not till 1805 that any attempt was made to use chemical agency for the ordinary production of fire. In that year M. Chancel, assistant to Professor Thenard of Paris, introduced an apparatus consisting of a small bottle containing asbestos, saturated with strong sulphuric acid, with splints or matches coated with sulphur, and tipped with a mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar. The matches so prepared, when brought into contact with the sulphuric acid in the bottle, ignited, and thus, by chemical action, fire was produced. It appears also that in the same year phosphorus matches were known in Paris, and in 1809 Derepas proposed to lessen the dangerously great inflamma bility of the phosphorus match by making an igniting mixture of that element with magnesia. It is also said that M. Derosne made a friction match with a phosphorus tip in 1816. Again in 1823 a phosphorus match was pro posed, but it came into little use. In this case the composi tion consisted of equal parts of phosphorus and sulphur cautiously melted together in a glass tube. The tube was then securely corked, and, to obtain a light, a splint was introduced into the mixture, and a small pellet detached, which on withdrawal and exposure almost spontaneously ignited. In that year (1823) a decided impetus was given to the artificial evolution of fire by the introduction of the Dobereiner lamp, so called after its inventor Professor Dobereiner of Jena. The action of this elegant invention depends on the remarkable property possessed by spongy or highly porous platinum of determining the combination of hydrogen and oxygen and the formation of water at common atmospheric temperatures. In the Dobereiner lamp hydrogen is evolved in a suitable vessel by the action of zinc on acidulated water. The gas so liberated, when required, is passed through a fine orifice by means of a stop-cock, and impinging on a mass of spongy platinum mounted in a frame it combines with oxygen of the air, thereby developing an intense heat, which quickly causes the platinum to glow, and ultimately is sufficiently intense to set the stream of hydrogen itself on fire. The Dobereiner lamp is still occasionally seen, but it is chiefly used in connexion with chemical lectures. The first really practical friction matches were made in England in 1827, by Mr John Walker, a druggist of Stockton-on-Tees. These were known as &quot; Congreves &quot; after Sir William Congreve, Bart., the inventor of the Congreve rocket, and consisted of wooden splints or sticks of cardboard coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum, With each box of eighty-four, which was retailed at a shilling, there was supplied a folded piece of glass paper, the folds of which were to be tightly pressed together, while the match was drawn through between them. In 1830 the so-called &quot; Prometheans &quot; were patented by Mr S. Jones of London. These consisted of a short roll of paper with a small quantity of a mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar at one end, a thin glass globule of strong sulphuric acid being attached at the same point. When the sulphuric acid was liberated by pinching the glass globule, it acted on the mixed chlorate and sugar, pro ducing fire. The phosphorus friction match of the present day was first introduced on a commercial scale in 1833; aud it appears to have been made almost simultaneously in several distinct centres. The name most prominently connected with the early stages of the invention is that of Preschel of Vienna, who in 1833 had a factory in operation for making phosphorus matches, fusees, and amadou slips tipped with igniting composition. At the same time also matches were being made by Moldenhauer in Darmstadt ; and for a long series of years Austria and the South- German states were the principal centres of the new industry. Improvements in the manufacture have been numerous ; and the industry is now carried on with a complete system of ingenious labour-saving machinery. The use of phosphorus as a principal ingredient in the igniting mixture of matches has not been free from very serious disadvantages. It is a deadly poison, the free dissemination of which has led to many accidental deaths, and also to numerous cases of wilful poisoning and suicides. Workers also who are exposed to phosphoric vapours are subject to a peculiarly distressing disease which attacks the jaw, and ultimately produces necrosis of the jaw bone ; it appears, however, that, with scrupulous attention to ventilation and cleanliness, almost all risk of the disease may be avoided. Strenuous efforts have been made by numerous inventors to introduce matches having no phosphorus in their igniting mixture, but hitherto with indifferent success. The most serious objections to the use of phosphorus have, however, been overcome by the discovery of the modified condition of that body known as red or amorphous phosphorus, made by Pro fessor Anton Von Schrotter of Vienna in 1845, and the utilization of that substance in the now well-known &quot;safety matches&quot; invented by Lundstrb m of Sweden in 1855, and first manufactured in the United Kingdom by Bryant &amp;lt;fc May of London. Eed phosphorus is, in itself, a perfectly innocuous substance, and no evil effects arise from freely working the compositions of which it forms an ingredient. The fact again that safety matches ignite only in exceptional circumstances on any other than the pre pared surfaces which accompany the box which surfaces and not the matches themselves contain the phosphorus required for ignition makes them much less liable to cause accidental fires than the kinds more commonly in use. Manufacture. The operations carried on in a match factory may be grouped under the four heads of preparing the splints, dipping the matches, box-making, and filling. The varieties of wood principally used for matches are poplar, aspen, yellow pine, and white pine. Splints are either round or quadrangular, the former having been at one time exceedingly common, when Austrian manufactures ruled the markets ; but, now that Sweden is the principal match-manufacturing country, matches are nearly all square in section. For cutting square splints many ingenious machines have been devised, some of which, worked by engine- power, can turn out from 15,000,000 to 17,000,000 splints per day. In Sweden the manufacturers use principally aspen or clean- grained pine wood, preferring sections 12 to 20 inches in diameter, newly felled and full of sap. If dry, the wood must be soaked before it is fit for the operations through which it passes. The timber is cut into blocks about 15 inches long sufficient for seven matches and being freed from bark it is fixed in a special form of turning lathe, and by means of a fixed cutting tool acting on its entire length a continuous veneer or band the thickness of a match is cut off. With each revolution of the block the knife advances proportionately to the thickness of the band cut off, and thus a uniformly thick slice is obtained continuously. At the same time eight small knives cut the veneer into seven separate bands each the length of a match, and thus in one operation seven long ribbons of wood the length and thickness of a match are obtained. These ribbons are next broken into lengths of from 6 to 7 feet, knotty pieces are removed, and to cut them into single matches they are fed into a machine which acts somewhat like a straw-chopper. From 120 to 140 bands are acted on in the apparatus, and a ratchet arrangement feeds them forward the thickness of a match at each stroke of the cutter, which thus cuts off 120 to 140 matches per stroke. Worked by hand the machine delivers about 5,000,000 splints per day, and by power it can be run to turn out double that number. The matches are next XV. - 79