Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/701

Rh devising the best provisions practicable for the safety of the workmen.

A curious coincidence occurred in 1845, when the attention of Lorinser in Vienna was first directed to phosphorus poisoning, and Römer, of the same city, discovered the amorphous or red form of phosphorus and the method of converting white phosphorus into it. This form of the element, taking fire at 250° C., is not poisonous. Römer and Preschel were engaged in experiments to find whether the new form of phosphorus might not be used in matches instead of white phosphorus. They found that a mixture of chlorate of potash, sulphuret of antimony, and amorphous phosphorus would take fire readily through friction on a rough body, but the same result followed which Kammerer had experienced with his first mixture. The mass exploded with a violence that sent burning bits of the stuff hissing all over the room. About 1850 the German chemist Böttger introduced a novelty which marked the beginning of a new era in the match manufacture. He made the substance of the head of the match of a mixture of chlorate of potash and sulphuret of antimony, using gum to bind them, and prepared a special friction surface consisting of a coating that contained amorphous phosphorus. When the head of the match was drawn over this substance bits of the amorphous phosphorus were kindled here and there by the friction, which ignited parts of the match-head, producing the explosion of the whole mixture.

The "Swedish safety matches" were made in many German shops from Böttger's recipes about 1850, but they could not compete with the phosphorus matches. People had become accustomed to the last; they were easily lighted, and if the sandpaper was lost, fire could be got by drawing them on the wall or the trousers; while with the new matches one had always to carry his rough card phosphorized with amorphous phosphorus, without which his match was useless. The great value of the German discovery, however, became known abroad about 1860, when the Swedish engineer Lundstrom founded the famous factory in Jönköping. The material of the match-head and the friction surface remained as before, but the Swedes devised a practicable method of boxing, putting the matches in the little convenient slide-boxes, and the chief hindrance to the spread of the invention was removed. The "Swedish matches," as they are now generally called, do not light of themselves so easily as the phosphorus matches, and are therefore safer; and they are, further, unpoisonous. It is therefore no wonder that the "Swedes" have enjoyed a triumphal march through the world, have found a home in Europe and America, and have even made their way into dark Africa. During its most prosperous period, the