BEFORE MATCHES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 85, 20 October 1928, Page 20

BEFORE MATCHES

■ LIGHTING THE FAMILY FHtE. There is scarcely any single latterday? invention which is taken more completely for granted, as something that has always been at hand, than tho simple little match. And yet, according to reliable authorities, the first attempt to make matches in the modern sense is probably to be ascribed to Godfrey Haukwitz. He, one learns (says tho! "Christian Science Monitor"), in 1080, acting under the direction of Robert Boyle, who at that time had just discovered how to prepare phosphorus, em--ployed small pieces of that element, ignited by friction, to light splints of wood dipped in sulphur. Even more, however, this device of somewhat primitive present-day matches did not *cbmo into extensive use owing to the' high cost of- the phosphorus and the general inconvenience associated therewith, added to what proved to bo the great hazard of thus producing fire, un-t-til the -beginning of tho nineteenth' ccn--tury. Flint and steel, with tinder-box and sulphur-tipped splints af wood — spunks, as these latter were called—: were thus the common means of obtaining * fire for domestic and other pur-: poses until relatively not so very long ago. From such a standpoint the study recently made by Dr. Walter Hough, of tho fire-making apparatus collected by the National Museum in Washington, D.C., assumes added interest. For Dr. Hough actually goes so

far: as.to- state that the very origin ;6f ! fire-making is not very - far..back. . in 'time; It. has been computed l,hat, in 'the principal countries of the world to- ; day'l from six to ten matches are used "for each inhabitant daily, while the 'world's annual output is said to reach '■: a total which requires 12 or 13 figures ;for' its expression. This is the more siginificant when it is recalled, that it is ;ahnoßt exactly 100, years since,the first 'really practical friction matches were "madb in England by one John Walker. i Matches may be but : trifles ordinarily !:considered, but what would tho world i'be like to-day withouti.tlieml