Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and I love all things tech. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about lighters. And this is sort
Speaker 1: of a sequel to our last episode, which was about matches.
Speaker 1: Alimona is not in the studio and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: report that nothing in my line of vision is currently
Speaker 1: on fire. So we're going to pick up where we
Speaker 1: left off in that last episode. And in that episode,
Speaker 1: I described an invention that used chemistry to create a flame,
Speaker 1: to ignite a flame. Now, this particular invention I talked
Speaker 1: about in the last episode is a pretty dangerous contraption.
Speaker 1: It used sulfuric acid, which by itself is dangerous can
Speaker 1: seriously injure and disfigure you. But it was using sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid and zinc in order to generate hydrogen gas, and
Speaker 1: hydrogen gas is also potentially really dangerous. Hydrogen gas is
Speaker 1: lighter than air, but unlike helium, hydrogen is extremely flammable.
Speaker 1: It's the stuff that contributed to the famous Hindenburg disaster.
Speaker 1: But now we're going to switch over to some other
Speaker 1: technologies and developments that made the modern lighter possible. Because,
Speaker 1: if you remember in that last episode, though the version
Speaker 1: I just mentioned was not really practical, they sold a
Speaker 1: few thousand of them, but it wasn't something that could
Speaker 1: easily be used, and it certainly wasn't something you could
Speaker 1: carry around in your pocket. So our next advance in
Speaker 1: the making of fire would date back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, so the early nineteen hundreds. That's
Speaker 1: when an Austrian scientist named Baron carl Aur von Velba
Speaker 1: was working with some mixtures of rare earth elements to
Speaker 1: see what you know, they would do, so what scientists
Speaker 1: do sometimes just trying stuff. Well, one of those elements
Speaker 1: he was working with was a metal called serrium c
Speaker 1: E R I U M, and it's a relatively soft metal.
Speaker 1: It's silvery white in color, but it does tarnish when
Speaker 1: it's exposed to air, so it doesn't stay silvery white
Speaker 1: for very long. And it's soft enough then you can
Speaker 1: actually cut this stuff with a knife, so it's a
Speaker 1: pretty soft metal. Velbot discovered that creating an alloy, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a combination of different metals and other components.
Speaker 1: But if you create an alloy using iron and cyrium,
Speaker 1: it was actually mostly iron about seventy iron cirium that
Speaker 1: you would create a substance that could ignite sparks if
Speaker 1: it was struck or scratched by a harder material. And
Speaker 1: he called this stuff pharaoh cyrium, and he classified it
Speaker 1: as a mish battle, which is sort of a Germanic
Speaker 1: word that essentially means mixed metal or alloy. These days,
Speaker 1: pharao cyrium and mish metal has a slightly different spelling.
Speaker 1: Typically are frequently used to describe the same thing. Also,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks will refer to this stuff as
Speaker 1: flint in modern lighters, but that is misleading. Flint is
Speaker 1: something very different, and this merits a quick explanation so
Speaker 1: that you guys can understand and appreciate the difference between
Speaker 1: flint and pharaoh cirium. Alright, so let's start off with quartz.
Speaker 1: This stuff is the most abundant mineral found at Earth's surface,
Speaker 1: so we humans have tons of experience with quartz. If
Speaker 1: you take one part silicon to two parts oxygen, that's quartz.
Speaker 1: And it's a durable mineral, and it has some really
Speaker 1: super interesting properties. It's heat resistant, so it's a good
Speaker 1: component to use in materials where you want to have
Speaker 1: something that can stand up to great amounts of heat.
Speaker 1: It also has a really interesting quirky phenomena that's associated
Speaker 1: with it and some other materials. If you exert a
Speaker 1: mechanical stress on quartz, in other words, if you hit it,
Speaker 1: it then accumulates an electrical charge, or if you expose
Speaker 1: quarts to an electrical charge, it will exert an internal
Speaker 1: mechanical strain. It will vibrate. So you can make quartz
Speaker 1: pulse at a consistent frequency by applying an electrical charge
Speaker 1: to it, which is why quartz crystals are used in
Speaker 1: analog watches and clocks. The predictable, repeatable vibration that frequency
Speaker 1: is always going to be the same is a great
Speaker 1: way to keep track of the passing of time, and
Speaker 1: so you use that as sort of the uh, the
Speaker 1: foundation for all the other time keeping elements. But this
Speaker 1: is not an episode about clockwork. So we'll get back
Speaker 1: to piece of electric because it will play a part
Speaker 1: later on in our episode, but let's leave that off
Speaker 1: for now. Now. More than that, quartz comes in many
Speaker 1: different varieties and one of those varieties is flint. Flint
Speaker 1: contains a lot of impurities, so it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: pure quartz at all. It doesn't look like what we
Speaker 1: think of when we think of the word quartz. Flint
Speaker 1: tends to be dark gray in color, but it can
Speaker 1: have other colors in it as well, like brown or red,
Speaker 1: sometimes even whi er yellow, and typically is much closer
Speaker 1: to opaque than what we think of when we think
Speaker 1: of quarts. We tend to think of something that's at
Speaker 1: least translucent with quartz, but flint tends to be almost opaque.
Speaker 1: And like courts in general, flint has no flat surfaces
Speaker 1: of internal weakness, no Planer weakness inside court flint or cowards.
Speaker 1: That means that you do not observe cleavage with quartz
Speaker 1: or flint, which is, you know, actual geological kind of
Speaker 1: term here. So in other words, if you were to
Speaker 1: strike this material hard enough to break it, you would
Speaker 1: see what's called a conchoidal fracture, that's a smoothly curving fracture.
Speaker 1: Surface Glass is a type of material that has conchoidal
Speaker 1: fractures as opposed to Planer fractures or cleavage. By breaking
Speaker 1: quartz or flint in very precise ways. You can fashion tough,
Speaker 1: sharp objects, stuff that can stand up to somewear and tear,
Speaker 1: and it can have a very sharp edge to it,
Speaker 1: which is why flint was a valuable material in early
Speaker 1: human history. It could be chipped to shape into stuff
Speaker 1: like arrowheads spear points, as well as into cutting tools
Speaker 1: like access is now getting back to making fires. The
Speaker 1: property we're interested in with flint is that if you
Speaker 1: were to strike flint against iron, you can create sparks.
Speaker 1: But why is that, Well, it's not because of the
Speaker 1: flint necessarily, it's actually more because of the irons. The
Speaker 1: iron is pyrophoric, which means it's a material that will
Speaker 1: ignite under room temperature. And that probably sounds really weird, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, we've all come into contact with iron, We've
Speaker 1: all seen iron objects, and most of the time I
Speaker 1: think we could agree that's not you know, currently on fire.
Speaker 1: So what actually gives here? What's happening and why do
Speaker 1: I say that iron is pyrophoric. We'll see when iron
Speaker 1: encounters air, it begins to oxidize, and with iron, that
Speaker 1: means it develops a thin layer of iron oxide on
Speaker 1: the outside surface of the iron itself. Iron oxide is
Speaker 1: known by another name rust. So the rusting process is
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction, and it's an exothermic chemical reaction, if
Speaker 1: you remember from our last episode. An exothermic reaction is
Speaker 1: one that in the process of this chemical reaction going on,
Speaker 1: releases heat. But if you're talking about any appreciable amount
Speaker 1: of iron, as in more than just a tiny speck
Speaker 1: of the stuff, that heat dissipates pretty quickly. The relative
Speaker 1: mass of the iron is great enough that the heat
Speaker 1: becomes a non factor. And this is really important. We
Speaker 1: have to consider the ratio of a any given amount
Speaker 1: of irons mass relative to the surface area that is
Speaker 1: exposed to the air. If the iron has more than
Speaker 1: a little mass, that heat can dissipate through the rest
Speaker 1: of the hunk of iron. You know, all the iron
Speaker 1: atoms that are not exposed to air will just sort
Speaker 1: of absorb that heat and nothing else happens apart from
Speaker 1: the external surfaces rusting. And once they rust, they've got
Speaker 1: this sort of protective layer, and thus the rest of
Speaker 1: the iron atoms aren't exposed to oxygen anymore. Rusting really
Speaker 1: is just a similar process to burning. That burning is
Speaker 1: also a chemical reaction. In which material oxidizes. It is
Speaker 1: just that burning happens a lot faster and with you know,
Speaker 1: flames and stuff. When you strike iron with a flint,
Speaker 1: the flint is actually hard enough and typically sharp enough
Speaker 1: to cause very tiny shards of iron to shear off
Speaker 1: of whatever it is you're striking. While any part of
Speaker 1: those tiny pieces that were previously exposed to oxygen still
Speaker 1: have an iron oxide coating, the rest of those small
Speaker 1: pieces haven't been touched by oxygen at all, So these
Speaker 1: are pure iron with no iron oxide arm and as
Speaker 1: soon as that surface makes contact with oxygen, the oxidizing
Speaker 1: process begins immediately. So now we're talking about iron in
Speaker 1: which the ratio of surface area of exposed iron compared
Speaker 1: to the mass of that iron has been flipped. It's
Speaker 1: very little mass, and much of it is exposed to oxygen.
Speaker 1: The mass of the shards is so low that it
Speaker 1: cannot dissipate that heat, So the exposed surface oxidizes at
Speaker 1: a rate faster than heat can dissipate. So since the
Speaker 1: heat can't dissipate, it builds up. It builds up super
Speaker 1: super fast, and those tiny shards of iron get hot,
Speaker 1: hot enough to glow and to reach the ignition temperature
Speaker 1: of some other fuel source, like the tinder of a
Speaker 1: camp fire. That all happens in the blink of an eye,
Speaker 1: and that is a spark. The spark you see are
Speaker 1: these tiny pieces of iron that are oxidizing and they're
Speaker 1: generating so much heat that they cannot dissipate that the
Speaker 1: metal itself begins to glow from that heat. So when
Speaker 1: you strike iron against flint, you're creating tiny flying shards
Speaker 1: of white hot iron particles, and that's why you're able
Speaker 1: to use those to light a camp fire. For example.
Speaker 1: Flint was also used in early firearms. Flint would be
Speaker 1: in the striking arm of a gun like a flint
Speaker 1: lock rifle or a flint lock pistol, and so you
Speaker 1: would have this little hammer that would have flint attached
Speaker 1: to it, and you would have a little cup, essentially
Speaker 1: a little receptacle cup, and the when you pull the trigger,
Speaker 1: the hammer would come down and strike inside the cup.
Speaker 1: It would hit another surface that would be made out
Speaker 1: of pyrite, which is a mix of iron and silicon.
Speaker 1: The collision would create sparks, which ignites a small amount
Speaker 1: of gunpowder. It leads into the chamber of the firearm
Speaker 1: ignites a larger amount of gunpowder, which causes an explosion
Speaker 1: and then propels a projectile out of the weapon. So
Speaker 1: that's where you get your flintlock pistols and your flintlock rifles. Now,
Speaker 1: technically you don't absolutely have to use flint. If you
Speaker 1: want to use iron to generate sparks. You really just
Speaker 1: need something that's hard enough and sharp enough to shear
Speaker 1: off those tiny particles of iron. That's the secret. It's
Speaker 1: not the flint, it's really the iron. Flint happens to
Speaker 1: have that kind of hardness to it naturally, and there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of flint that's available readily out in
Speaker 1: the world. It's close to the surface of the planet,
Speaker 1: so it's easy to find, so it's a very common
Speaker 1: pairing with iron or steel. Also, remember steel itself is
Speaker 1: an alloy of iron and carbon and sometimes some other
Speaker 1: stuff too, and carbon steel is mostly iron like iron,
Speaker 1: and tends to be fairly brittle as far as steel goes,
Speaker 1: so it's frequently used in flint and steel kits. In fact,
Speaker 1: steel is typically better than playin old iron is because
Speaker 1: as iron has a tendency to bend rather than break
Speaker 1: when it's struck by a harder surface, So you want
Speaker 1: something that's a little more brittle that will shear off
Speaker 1: a bit. Because bending doesn't produce sparks, It just you know,
Speaker 1: dentse it. Adding carbon makes iron less bindy. So in general,
Speaker 1: the harder the steel and the sharper the flint, the
Speaker 1: better sparks you're gonna get when you strike the two
Speaker 1: of them together. Also, if you've ever seen anyone use
Speaker 1: a machine like a grinder to shape iron or steel,
Speaker 1: you've likely seen showers of sparks that come down as
Speaker 1: a result. Those sparks come from the same process I
Speaker 1: just described. Tiny fragments of pure iron are glowing white
Speaker 1: hot as they oxidize upon exposure to the air. All right,
Speaker 1: but what about pharaoh cyrium. I mentioned that earlier. Well
Speaker 1: for starters, pharaoh Cyrium is not a mineral like flint is.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, some people don't refer to flint
Speaker 1: as a mineral, they just call it a rock. But
Speaker 1: pharaoh cirium isn't a mineral or a rock. It's an alloy.
Speaker 1: It's made up of two metals, and the combination of
Speaker 1: iron and syrium turned out to be really useful. You've
Speaker 1: got iron, which will oxidize rapidly when exposed to air,
Speaker 1: and you've got cirium, which has a low ignition temperature,
Speaker 1: so that oxidizing process will ignite the serrium and make
Speaker 1: the sparks more practical, makes it more likely that you're
Speaker 1: able to use them to do something like light of fire.
Speaker 1: And after he first developed pharaoh cirium, Welsbach would tweak
Speaker 1: this alloy to try and fine tune it to make
Speaker 1: it more effective as sort of a spark making fire
Speaker 1: starting material. He discovered that adding another soft metal called
Speaker 1: lanthanum in very small amounts meant that Pharao cirium would
Speaker 1: create brighter sparks and thus be even more effective as
Speaker 1: a way of starting fires. Now, in most lighters, the
Speaker 1: quote unquote flint in the lighter is actually a piece
Speaker 1: of pharaoh cirium. It's not flint, it's pharaoh cirium. And
Speaker 1: then most lighters use some sort of wheel made out
Speaker 1: of a harder material like steel that's a striker. So
Speaker 1: turning the steel wheel causes the wheel to rub or
Speaker 1: strike against the pharaoh cyrium quote unquote flint quickly, and
Speaker 1: that throws off sparks. There's usually some other piece of
Speaker 1: the lighter that holds the pharaoh cirium to a positive
Speaker 1: pressure against the wheel so that it remains in contact
Speaker 1: with the wheel even as you start to wear down
Speaker 1: the pharaoh cirium. So there's usually some sort of spring
Speaker 1: or something that exerts pressure on that pharaoh cirium to
Speaker 1: make sure it remains in contact with the wheel, because
Speaker 1: if the pharaoh cirium loses contact with the wheel, the
Speaker 1: wheel will just spend freely. You won't get any sparks
Speaker 1: at all because the material that gives off the sparks
Speaker 1: isn't in contact with the striking surface anymore. Bells box
Speaker 1: discovery created an alternative to relying on chemistry to generate
Speaker 1: a flame. The arc would do it if only you
Speaker 1: have a supply of fuel. So one of the early
Speaker 1: inventions to use pharaoh sirium as a way to start
Speaker 1: fires was called the Pisto lighter. I actually have an
Speaker 1: outtake where I said pistoleter because it's spelled like leader,
Speaker 1: but lighter. It's a lighter. Uh is from a company
Speaker 1: called Ronson, and it was called the Pisto lighter because
Speaker 1: it had sort of a pistol grip. In fact, it
Speaker 1: looked kind of like a little handgun, a little pistol,
Speaker 1: but instead of shooting bullets, this thing shoots sparks. Ronson
Speaker 1: would actually play an important part in the early history
Speaker 1: of lighters, so it makes sense to talk about them
Speaker 1: for just a minute. The company was founded just before
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century by Louis Vincent Ironson
Speaker 1: or Ronson, h Leopold Hertzig and Max Hecked, though at
Speaker 1: the time the company they called they formed was called
Speaker 1: the Art Metal Works, and the company mainly made stuff
Speaker 1: out of iron, ranging from lamps to decorative items. But
Speaker 1: Aaronson was a bit of a chemist and an engineer,
Speaker 1: and he kept liking to, you know, to to to
Speaker 1: fiddle and and mess with stuff and try and figure
Speaker 1: out different ways of accomplishing things. He worked on creating
Speaker 1: better matches before he started making you know, lighters, and
Speaker 1: UH we talked about some of those attempts in the
Speaker 1: last episode, not about his work in particular, but the
Speaker 1: attempt to move away from things like white phosphorus as
Speaker 1: your active component in a match. While n the company,
Speaker 1: UH introduced the pistol lighter, and inside this lighter was
Speaker 1: a length of pharaoh syrium um like a surface of
Speaker 1: pharao syrium inside what would be the barrel of this pistol,
Speaker 1: and then also inside of it was a spring loaded
Speaker 1: file of harder material, and so you could pull back
Speaker 1: on this and it would have the spring compress and
Speaker 1: a little catch would be put in place to hold
Speaker 1: the spring there, and the file would be in its
Speaker 1: h back position. You'd pull a trigger that would release
Speaker 1: the spring, and the spring would thus expand and would
Speaker 1: push the file against the pharaoh serrium inside the barrel
Speaker 1: of this pistol lighter, and sparks would fly out the end.
Speaker 1: As a result. The pistol lighter didn't create a sustained
Speaker 1: flame like a modern lighter. It was more of a
Speaker 1: spark stick type of thing. So the idea was you
Speaker 1: would aim this at, say the tinder for a camp fire,
Speaker 1: or maybe a motor engine. At the time, there were
Speaker 1: cars that and and motors that required you to have
Speaker 1: uh an actual external ignition source to to make them work.
Speaker 1: Scary times, but if all went well, when you pull
Speaker 1: the trigger, the sparks from the pistol lighter would ignite
Speaker 1: whatever it was you were aiming. At and you would
Speaker 1: have your camp fire started, or your motor would begin
Speaker 1: if it didn't work on the first past, and you
Speaker 1: could pull the file back to the starting position, compressing
Speaker 1: the spring, activating the catch, and you'd be ready for
Speaker 1: a second go of it. To create a sustained flame,
Speaker 1: a lighter would need an additional component, one of the
Speaker 1: three components that make up the fire triangle, and that
Speaker 1: would be fuel. I'll explain more in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
Speaker 1: back now. There are three main components that I want
Speaker 1: to focus on with the early lighters that could create
Speaker 1: a sustained flame. One is the piece of faro syrium, which,
Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, frequently gets referred to as the flint,
Speaker 1: even though flint and pharao sirium are very different things,
Speaker 1: and technically it's again not flint. In flint and steel
Speaker 1: that gives off the sparks when you're striking them together,
Speaker 1: it's really the steel, not the flint. If you slam
Speaker 1: two pieces of flint together, you can sometimes get sparks
Speaker 1: because sometimes you have trace other elements in there that
Speaker 1: will create them. But the second component is the striker,
Speaker 1: which in many lighters is a wheel that has a
Speaker 1: ribbed outer edge and that is pressed against the pharao serium,
Speaker 1: or rather I should say the pharaoh cerium is pressed
Speaker 1: against the wheel. And so typically you would put like
Speaker 1: your thumb on the wheel, for example, and and you
Speaker 1: would spin it the wheel pretty quickly by bringing your
Speaker 1: thumb down, and that would end up striking against the
Speaker 1: pharao serrium and then you get a spark. The third
Speaker 1: component is a wick, as in a wick like like
Speaker 1: what you would find in a candle, and the purpose
Speaker 1: of the wick is to transfer small amounts of some
Speaker 1: sort of fuel such as uh nuff the from a
Speaker 1: fuel container section of the lighter to the area where
Speaker 1: the wheel and the pharaoh cerium are generating sparks. And
Speaker 1: clearly you want that to be a separate area from
Speaker 1: the main source of fuel. Otherwise you're being igniting all
Speaker 1: the fuel in one go, and that would be wasteful
Speaker 1: and probably pretty darned dangerous. So the wick is sort
Speaker 1: of like a fuel highway. It's very similar to the
Speaker 1: way wick works with a candle. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the physics involved in that for a second, because candles
Speaker 1: are something I never really thought about in the sense
Speaker 1: of how do those work? I mean, why would you
Speaker 1: even bother encasing a wick in wax? Why not just
Speaker 1: burn the wick material? What the heck is going on here?
Speaker 1: All right? So, when you light a candle, you light
Speaker 1: the end of the exposed wick, and that part is
Speaker 1: easy to understand, right. It starts to burn, So the
Speaker 1: wick itself is starting to burn, and the heat from
Speaker 1: that burning wick melts wax at that end of the candle.
Speaker 1: At the top of the candle, the wick starts to
Speaker 1: absorb that liquid wax, so it wicks away the wax
Speaker 1: into the wick itself. The lick it wax. If you
Speaker 1: were to try and light it on fire, it would
Speaker 1: only burn if you were using really high temperatures, far
Speaker 1: hotter than what a burning wick would be able to create.
Speaker 1: The liquid wax in the wick continues to heat up
Speaker 1: and it starts to vaporize. And while liquid wax only
Speaker 1: burns its super high temperatures, wax vapor is different. It's
Speaker 1: flammable at the right temperature of of a candle. So
Speaker 1: the vaporizing wax is what you're actually seeing burn when
Speaker 1: a candle is burning, and the vaporizing wax also has
Speaker 1: the effect of cooling the wick underneath. As it vaporizes,
Speaker 1: it's carrying heat away, so the wick doesn't just burn away.
Speaker 1: That's why the wick can remain serviceable even as the
Speaker 1: candle continues to burn. It doesn't just burn up and
Speaker 1: become useless. So the wick remains a conduit for the
Speaker 1: liquid wax. So if you just set fire to a wick,
Speaker 1: if it didn't have any candle around it, it would
Speaker 1: just burn up pretty quickly and then you'd be in
Speaker 1: the dark again. But a candle isn't burning up the
Speaker 1: wick as its primary fuel. It's burning up the wax, right,
Speaker 1: So a lighter wick serves the same purpose as a
Speaker 1: candle wick, which is again to convey fuel through absorption
Speaker 1: or wicking from the fuel container to the combustion area.
Speaker 1: The fuel for early lighters was, as I said, neftha
Speaker 1: or nf thea uh. That's a term that originates from
Speaker 1: the Middle East, particularly around Azerbaijan and Iran, and it
Speaker 1: was used to describe a particularly volatile type of petroleum
Speaker 1: found in those regions, But then it would get applied
Speaker 1: to all sorts of different stuff after that, Like it
Speaker 1: was described as early as the first century by smarty
Speaker 1: pants eggheads like Pliny the Elder, but later folks would
Speaker 1: use that term to refer to all sorts of different stuff,
Speaker 1: and it confused the matter, like alchemists and scholars in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages would use it to describe pretty much
Speaker 1: any liquid with a low boiling point. For our purposes,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a hydrocarbon fuel. In nineteen twelve, the
Speaker 1: Ronson Company introduced the Wonder light, and unlike the pistol light,
Speaker 1: this lighter actually contained fuel and used a wick so
Speaker 1: that the sparks would ignite the fuel that was in
Speaker 1: the wig and create a sort of permanent match. That's
Speaker 1: what they called it. Now, it was much easier to
Speaker 1: light stuff like lamps and candles that way. You weren't
Speaker 1: just shooting sparks. You had a sustained flame and you
Speaker 1: could use that to light other stuff. And there may
Speaker 1: well have been other lighters in a similar vein of
Speaker 1: this type uh that might have even been invented before
Speaker 1: the wonder Light. But as it turns out, this is
Speaker 1: one of those topics where it's really hard to find
Speaker 1: a definitive history on the subject, and it's also difficult
Speaker 1: to trace back who created the very first version of
Speaker 1: whatever particular incarnation you're looking at. But in ninety six
Speaker 1: Ronson introduced a super cool lighter, a pocket lighter called
Speaker 1: the Banjo. This lighter had a button essentially a lever.
Speaker 1: So imagine a little lighter where you've got a lever
Speaker 1: and you push down on the lever, and when you
Speaker 1: do that, it has sort of a double action result.
Speaker 1: One is that this pushing down would also turn a
Speaker 1: striking wheel that would rub up against some pharaoh cyrium
Speaker 1: and thus create a spark. So pushing down on the
Speaker 1: lever you get a spark out of it. But the
Speaker 1: other effect was that it lifted a cap off of
Speaker 1: the wick for this lighter. So when the lever is
Speaker 1: in the up position, you know, unpressed, the cap is down.
Speaker 1: Pushing down on the lever creates the spark and reveals
Speaker 1: the wick, and the same go so the spark can
Speaker 1: hit the wick that's got fuel on it, and then
Speaker 1: the wick can light. Letting go of the button, as
Speaker 1: long as you hold the button, the light is the
Speaker 1: light still remains, the flame is still lit. But leting
Speaker 1: go to the button means the cap comes down and
Speaker 1: it extinguishes the fire because it cuts off the supply
Speaker 1: of oxygen, which is again one of the three things
Speaker 1: we need in order to sustain a fire. You need
Speaker 1: the fuel, you need the heat, and you need an oxidizer.
Speaker 1: So you remove the oxidizer, the flame goes out. This
Speaker 1: made the Banjo the first automatic pocket lighter in the world.
Speaker 1: In the company would release a tabletop version of the banjo,
Speaker 1: so this was one that you would not carry around
Speaker 1: with you in your pocket. Uh. It would be a
Speaker 1: piece on a desk or a table that you would
Speaker 1: use to light various things, typically cigarettes. I don't like
Speaker 1: talking about that because I don't like cigarettes, but that
Speaker 1: was the typical application of the time. As for fuel, well,
Speaker 1: I found a manual on how to care and refuel
Speaker 1: a Banjo lighter, and boy howdy did it raise my
Speaker 1: eyebrows because according to the manual, you could use quote
Speaker 1: high grade gasoline benzene or energen as fuel. Gasoline. That
Speaker 1: lighter must have smelled terrible, so to refuel. Uh. It
Speaker 1: had two screw caps on this lighter, a big one
Speaker 1: and a small one, so you would want to unscrew
Speaker 1: the larger of the two screw caps and that would
Speaker 1: open up a access to the fuel chamber, and presumably
Speaker 1: you would then use a funnel and you would very
Speaker 1: carefully refuel the lighter or else risks spilling something like
Speaker 1: gasoline all over it and turning it into a very
Speaker 1: dangerous one use item. The other screw cap, the smaller one,
Speaker 1: was for the chamber that held the piece of pharaoh
Speaker 1: syrium in place, so that the strike wheel would maintain
Speaker 1: contact with the pharaoh cyrium. And so imagine that you've
Speaker 1: got this little piece of this material that when it's struck,
Speaker 1: it gives us sparks, and it's being held against this
Speaker 1: wheel through the use of a spring that's slightly compressed.
Speaker 1: Uh So the screw cap opened up the chamber where
Speaker 1: the spring was. So if your Pharao syrium ran out,
Speaker 1: you know, you're spinning the wheel and no sparks are
Speaker 1: coming out, probably means that there's no more far as syrium,
Speaker 1: or that it's been worn down so far that's no
Speaker 1: longer making contact with the wheel. You would unscrew the
Speaker 1: screw cap, you take the spring out, you would take
Speaker 1: out whatever little remnants of the Pharao serrium you had
Speaker 1: in there. You put a new piece into that chamber.
Speaker 1: The new piece of Pharao syrium. You would put the
Speaker 1: spring back into the chamber and you would have to
Speaker 1: compress it down a little bit as you screwed the
Speaker 1: screw cap back in place, and it would again hold
Speaker 1: the new piece of Farris serrium against that striking wheel,
Speaker 1: so that you would have the sparking material right there
Speaker 1: ready to go for the next time you need to
Speaker 1: use the lighter. So you can actually use these things
Speaker 1: indefinitely as long as the other components held out. The
Speaker 1: banjo sold for five dollars according to most sources I
Speaker 1: came across. Now, you know me, I had to find
Speaker 1: out how much would be if we were to purchase
Speaker 1: it today, right, because this was five dollars back in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six. So according to inflation calculators, five dollars
Speaker 1: back in nineteen twenty six would be about the same
Speaker 1: amount as seventy two dollars today if we we factor
Speaker 1: in inflation, So this would be a lighter that would
Speaker 1: cost seventy two bucks. That's a pretty expensive lighter. But
Speaker 1: I guess if you're thinking that this could potentially replace
Speaker 1: the need for matches for like ever, maybe that could
Speaker 1: be a deal. If you're going through matches like crazy.
Speaker 1: These days, the original Ronson banjo lighters, if you can
Speaker 1: find them in good condition, can sell for a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred to several hundred dollars. They are sought after
Speaker 1: by collectors uh. Since nineteen twenty eight or so, the
Speaker 1: only Ronson banjo lighters that have been made have been
Speaker 1: replicas out of Japan, so those obviously are not as valuable.
Speaker 1: It's only the ones between nineteen six and nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight that were originally made by Ronson that will fetch
Speaker 1: those higher prices. Lighters like the banjo have lids so
Speaker 1: that the fuel doesn't just gradually evaporate away. If you
Speaker 1: kept that wick exposed to air, then fuel would start
Speaker 1: to evaporate over time, and you would continue to see
Speaker 1: it wick away from the fuel chamber and then and
Speaker 1: evaporate into the atmosphere. So you would end up running
Speaker 1: out a fuel much faster, So you want to have
Speaker 1: some sort of cap that keeps that from happening. Another
Speaker 1: brand would make this style of lighter incredibly famous, particularly
Speaker 1: in America. That brand was Zippo, and Zippo's founder was
Speaker 1: a guy named George G. Blaisdell, and the story goes
Speaker 1: that in the early nineteen thirties, Blaisdell saw a guy
Speaker 1: at the Bradford Country Club where Blaisdell was hanging out
Speaker 1: uh in Pennsylvania struggled to light a cigarette from an
Speaker 1: Austrian built lighter. But the lighter was kind of unwieldy
Speaker 1: and it looked like it required two hands to operate.
Speaker 1: It was made out of very thin metal, so that
Speaker 1: thin metal was actually soft enough where if you were
Speaker 1: gripping it too tightly, you could dent the lighter just
Speaker 1: through trying to use it. So Blaisdel saw the opportunity
Speaker 1: to improve upon that design and create a pocket lighter
Speaker 1: for the United States because he also saw that people
Speaker 1: really like cigarettes and they were going through matches like crazy,
Speaker 1: So if you could market something like that, you could
Speaker 1: really make some money. So Blaisdell then goes and purchases
Speaker 1: the United States production and distribution rights for that Austrian
Speaker 1: lighter manufacturer, so now Blasdel has the rights to make
Speaker 1: and sell those style lighters in the US. However, it
Speaker 1: didn't go over so well. He gave them a chrome
Speaker 1: plating to kind of make them more attractive and a
Speaker 1: little more durable. And he tried to sell them, but
Speaker 1: the lighters just didn't work very well, so he ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to scrap that approach entirely and to make his
Speaker 1: own lighters. So he rented out a small work space
Speaker 1: and he hired three people and they collectively tried to
Speaker 1: build a prototype for a new type of lighter. Blaizel
Speaker 1: sunk nearly three bucks Princely some in nineteen two to
Speaker 1: purchase used equipment machining equipment in order to design and
Speaker 1: build this lighter. Together, they built a lighter that had
Speaker 1: a hinged top. If you open the top, it would
Speaker 1: expose the striking wheel and the wick to the to
Speaker 1: the air uh and the wick itself was housed inside
Speaker 1: a chimney like chamber to protect it from the wind,
Speaker 1: so you could use the lighter even if you were
Speaker 1: out in on a windy day. You can also open
Speaker 1: the lighter with one hand. You could flick it open.
Speaker 1: All it took was the spin of the wheel to
Speaker 1: strike against the ferres sinium flint to cause a spark
Speaker 1: that would ignite the fuel on the wick in the chimney,
Speaker 1: and you get a nice bright flame. So if you practiced,
Speaker 1: you can flip open the lighter with one hand. You
Speaker 1: can roll the wheel with your thumb, or if you're
Speaker 1: trying to be you know, like serious cool person, you
Speaker 1: flipped open and then you strike that wheel against your
Speaker 1: hip or your thigh or something, and you light it
Speaker 1: and then you do your cool you know, I meant
Speaker 1: to do that kind of face. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: do that face because I if I meant to do it,
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, And if it happened, I'm just as
Speaker 1: surprised as you are. Anyway, the flame would stay active
Speaker 1: with the Zippo lighters until either all the fuel was
Speaker 1: gone or you flipped close the lid in order to
Speaker 1: cut off oxygen to the flame, so you didn't have
Speaker 1: to do anything to keep it lit. You know, you
Speaker 1: you roll the striking wheel as soon as those sparks
Speaker 1: ignite the fuel on the wick, it was gonna stay
Speaker 1: lit until you either closed it or you ran out
Speaker 1: of fuel or something else happened, like maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: you dunked it in water or something. Blaze don't liked
Speaker 1: the sound of the word zipper. He felt that just
Speaker 1: had a really good zing to it, so he decided
Speaker 1: to take a kind of a variant on that. Then
Speaker 1: he named the lighter the Zippo. The original price for
Speaker 1: a windproof zippo was a dollar n two, which means
Speaker 1: that today it would cost you about thirty six dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go out and buy a brand
Speaker 1: new zippo today, prices start somewhere around twenty bucks and
Speaker 1: they go up from there, reaching more than a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: For certain limited edition zippos, they're known not only for
Speaker 1: their iconic hinged top and the fact that they'll stay
Speaker 1: lit once you light them, but also for the types
Speaker 1: of artwork that are featured on them. I think my
Speaker 1: own personal favorite is one that is the brass Necronomicon lighter.
Speaker 1: But then I'm also the guy who wrote how Cathulu
Speaker 1: works as well as how the Necronomicon works for how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. By the way, I don't own
Speaker 1: a zip bow, but if I did, that's probably the
Speaker 1: one I would go for. Now. If you were to
Speaker 1: open up a modern Zippo lighter with the traditional fuel,
Speaker 1: so for example, let's say that you need to replace
Speaker 1: the wick or you need to refuel the zippo, here's
Speaker 1: how that that would go you would open up the case,
Speaker 1: and the Zippo case is just that, it's a case.
Speaker 1: It's it's not the lighter itself. The lighter is inside
Speaker 1: the case, and you can actually pull the lighter out
Speaker 1: lifting it out of the case. You turn the lighter
Speaker 1: upside down and on the underside you're gonna see a
Speaker 1: felt pad being held in place by a screw that's
Speaker 1: actually in an inside of a tube. That tube holds
Speaker 1: the pharaoh cirium uh or or flint screw. It's a
Speaker 1: piece that has the pharaoh cyrium at the very end
Speaker 1: of it. UH. If you're just refueling, you don't even
Speaker 1: need to touch that screw cap. You just move the
Speaker 1: felt pad out of the way like you bend it
Speaker 1: out the way, and then you would see some packing
Speaker 1: material inside the lighter. It kind of looks like cotton wadding,
Speaker 1: but it's this very specific type of packing material. So
Speaker 1: you would then take some lighter fluid Zippo as its
Speaker 1: own specific brand it would prefer you to use, and
Speaker 1: you would saturate that packing material. You would squirt the
Speaker 1: lighter fluid into the packing material itself. Once it was saturated,
Speaker 1: you would move the felt pad back into place to
Speaker 1: cover it up, and you would probably want to give
Speaker 1: the lighter a pass or two with a clean cloth
Speaker 1: to remove any excess fuel that might have spilled on
Speaker 1: the outside of it. Then you would replace the lighter
Speaker 1: inside the case. You want to also give the case
Speaker 1: a pass or two with a clean cloth, then wait
Speaker 1: a little bit to allow the lighter fluid to heat
Speaker 1: up to room temperature, and then you could use the
Speaker 1: lighter again and it would be totally refueled. While the
Speaker 1: purpose of a wick is to hold fuel and the
Speaker 1: wick itself isn't really meant to burn up, over time,
Speaker 1: carbon deposits on the wick will make the wick less effective.
Speaker 1: It won't absorb fuel, and then you'll get sparks when
Speaker 1: you're trying to use your lighter, but it won't actually light.
Speaker 1: So if you're using a Zippo like lighter, what you
Speaker 1: would do is you use some tweezers or a pair
Speaker 1: of needle nose players to grab hold of the end
Speaker 1: of the wick, and you would pull it out a
Speaker 1: little bit so that you get a clean section of
Speaker 1: wick inside the chimney of that lighter. Wicks are several
Speaker 1: inches long, so you can do this a couple of
Speaker 1: times with each wick. And when you do that, you
Speaker 1: would then snip off the end of the burnt wick,
Speaker 1: the carbon infused wick UH to remove that part so
Speaker 1: that you get a nice clean section inside the chimney,
Speaker 1: and then you're good to go for a good while longer. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've done that a couple of times, there might
Speaker 1: not be enough wick left inside the lighter to do
Speaker 1: it again, and you need to replace the wick. The
Speaker 1: replacement process is similar to what you would do if
Speaker 1: you were refueling, but as some extra steps. So you
Speaker 1: take the lighter out of the case, and rather than
Speaker 1: just moving the felt pad on the bottom aside, you
Speaker 1: would actually remove that screw at the end. It's called
Speaker 1: the flint screw again sparrow cerium, not flint, but whatever.
Speaker 1: You take out the felt pad because now it's no
Speaker 1: longer held there by the screw. UH. You would also
Speaker 1: take out the packing material, and the packing material typically
Speaker 1: comes out in three or four wads of the stuff. UH.
Speaker 1: You would need to feed a new wick into the lighter.
Speaker 1: You could either do it from inside through the fuel chamber,
Speaker 1: or you could put it down through the chimney and
Speaker 1: you get that so enough of it's poking out the
Speaker 1: top so that you've got the the clean wick at
Speaker 1: the top of the chimney, and then you would need
Speaker 1: to replace the packing material. You'd kind of have to
Speaker 1: do it in a way so that the packing material
Speaker 1: is all around the wick, so it has good exposure
Speaker 1: to that packing material, because remember it's the packing material
Speaker 1: the whole the fuel. The fuel then wicks into the wick,
Speaker 1: so you want to make sure it has really good
Speaker 1: um exposure to all of that. So you're packing the
Speaker 1: material all around the wick until it's all replaced. Then
Speaker 1: you would put the felt pad back in place, and
Speaker 1: you would re insert the flint screw, and then you
Speaker 1: could put it back inside the case and it would
Speaker 1: be good to go. Now, the reason I went through
Speaker 1: all that process wasn't to talk about Zippo the brand
Speaker 1: or anything. I'm not here to sell Zippo lighters, but
Speaker 1: rather to explain how lighters like the Zippo differ from
Speaker 1: other types of lighters, specifically those that use buttane, because
Speaker 1: not all lighters are created equal, and betane lighters work
Speaker 1: on slightly different principles from these style lighters, the wick
Speaker 1: based lighters. I'll explain more in just a moment. But
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. Before the break, I
Speaker 1: mentioned butane lighters, and they use butane as the fuel,
Speaker 1: and the basic type still uses a piece of ferrocerium
Speaker 1: to generate sparks to ignite that fuel. So in some
Speaker 1: ways they're very similar to the other types of lighters
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, but there are some key differences between
Speaker 1: butane lighters and the NUFA or lighter fluid based ones
Speaker 1: I had just been talking about. At room temperature and
Speaker 1: under normal atmospheric pressure, butane is a gas. It's naturally
Speaker 1: colorless and odorless. It's a hydrocarbon that's found in natural gas.
Speaker 1: It's also a byproduct during the process of refining petroleum
Speaker 1: to produce gasoline, and it is ignitable. But if you
Speaker 1: were to compress butane just a little bit, it liquefies.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't take too much pressure to convert mutane
Speaker 1: from a gas to liquid at room temperature about three
Speaker 1: and a half atmospheres of pressure. So if you sell
Speaker 1: bututane in a container that can hold that pressure, you
Speaker 1: apply that much pressure to it, at least the gas
Speaker 1: condenses into a liquid. Now I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: you when someone thought to use butane as a fuel
Speaker 1: for lighters. But honestly, there doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: record of when someone thought of that idea first. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of very general, vague descriptions. Some sources
Speaker 1: go really vague. They say something like sometime in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties people started using butchane for lighters. Others say
Speaker 1: it dates back a little earlier than that, with the
Speaker 1: invention of the butuane lighter coming somewhere in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties or nineteen forties, whenever they were first manufactured, and
Speaker 1: whomever it was that figured it out. They work on
Speaker 1: a pretty ingenious principle. So inside a butane lighter, the
Speaker 1: fuel chamber is sealed, so it acts as a low
Speaker 1: pressure container that keeps mutane in liquid form because it's
Speaker 1: under that three and a half atmospheres of pressure. A
Speaker 1: tube from the fuel chamber to the chim me, you know,
Speaker 1: the part where the flame comes up, acts as a
Speaker 1: conduit for this fuel. And the tube has a valve
Speaker 1: and a nozzle, so there's a valve and then right
Speaker 1: after the valves nozzle, so when the lighter is not used,
Speaker 1: the valve is shut. So the bututane remains in liquid form,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere for it to go. On a classic butane lighter,
Speaker 1: you've got the striking wheel, just like in the other
Speaker 1: lighters I've described, and rather than a wick, you have
Speaker 1: the end of a nozzle. And then there's this little
Speaker 1: button that you're supposed to hold down like you spin
Speaker 1: the wheel, and when your thumb comes down at the
Speaker 1: end of the spin, it presses this button and you're
Speaker 1: supposed to hold it down. That button is the release
Speaker 1: for the valve that closes off the tube from the
Speaker 1: fuel chamber. When that valve opens, there's a lower pressure
Speaker 1: pathway for the but tane to move through, and we
Speaker 1: know that fluids will move from an area of high
Speaker 1: pressure to an area of low pressure. So when this
Speaker 1: valve opens, the but tane moves up the tube and
Speaker 1: it hits the nozzle. The mutane then boils off into
Speaker 1: butane gas. The spark from the striking wheel uh and
Speaker 1: the flint or pharaoh's cirium ignites this escaping butane gas.
Speaker 1: So as long as you hold down the button, you
Speaker 1: keep the valve open, and the buttane gas continues to
Speaker 1: come out and feeds the flame. It provides the fuel,
Speaker 1: so the fuel is constantly being replenished as long as
Speaker 1: you hold down the button. When you let go of
Speaker 1: the button, it closes the valve, thus cutting off the
Speaker 1: fuel to the flame, and the flame goes out. Buttane
Speaker 1: lighters don't require a wick, so there's no need to
Speaker 1: replace wicks over time. There's no wick to replace. Many
Speaker 1: buttane lighters have a means of adjusting how wide that
Speaker 1: valve will open when you press down on a button.
Speaker 1: That affects how much butane gas can escape at any
Speaker 1: given amount of time, so it affects how big the
Speaker 1: flame will be. More fuel means bigger flame. Less fuel
Speaker 1: means smaller flame, so if you restrict the valve you
Speaker 1: get a very low flame. You open the valve as
Speaker 1: much as you can, the flame would be much larger.
Speaker 1: Another advantage was that butane didn't give off an unpleasant
Speaker 1: odor the way earlier fuels were. They were smelly, but
Speaker 1: butuane didn't smell. It burned without making any sort of
Speaker 1: smell at all. Really, one disadvantage is that it's trickier
Speaker 1: to refuel a bututane lighter. Some beautane lighters are marketed
Speaker 1: as disposable, which really just means there's no way to
Speaker 1: refuel them at all once they're out, so you're meant
Speaker 1: to throw them away and buy a new one. And
Speaker 1: when I say there's no way, people have figured out ways.
Speaker 1: But typically you're meant to just use it and then
Speaker 1: toss it, which is pretty wasteful. Perhaps the best known
Speaker 1: of these is the Big Lighter, which was first produced
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies. The bit lighter was seen
Speaker 1: as an inexpensive alternative to the more fashionable lighters like Zippo.
Speaker 1: Other bututane lighters are meant to be reusable, and they
Speaker 1: include a second valve. This is typically on the base
Speaker 1: of the lighter, the underside of the lighter, and this
Speaker 1: valve allows buttane gas to get injected into the fuel chamber,
Speaker 1: but prevents it from coming back out. Now, typically if
Speaker 1: you were refueling a butane lighter, you would hold the
Speaker 1: lighter upside down. You'd use something pointy to kind of
Speaker 1: open up the valve and bleed it of any old
Speaker 1: butane gas, and then you would get a butane refill
Speaker 1: can which has a nozzle on the end. The nozzle
Speaker 1: goes into the valve of the lighter and you would
Speaker 1: just insert the bututane can into the lighter, and after
Speaker 1: just a couple of seconds, like five seconds, it would
Speaker 1: refill the fuel chamber on the butane lighter, and you'd
Speaker 1: want to wait a little bit for the fuel inside
Speaker 1: the lighter to reach room temperature and then you can
Speaker 1: start using it again. Over time, a new variant on
Speaker 1: the butuane lighter showed up. This is the piece of
Speaker 1: electric lighter. I told you we kind of come back
Speaker 1: to it. So remember how I said. Quartz is an
Speaker 1: interesting material. If you apply mechanical stress to it, the
Speaker 1: quarts generates an internal electric charge. Well that's a manifestation
Speaker 1: of the piece of electric effect. So a piece of
Speaker 1: electric lighter uses this particular phenomenon in order to generate
Speaker 1: a spark. So there's no ferro serrium in a uh
Speaker 1: in a in this kind of lighter, or or flint
Speaker 1: if you prefer, there's none of that instead. A piece
Speaker 1: of electric lighter typically has a button on the lighter.
Speaker 1: If you push down on that button, you would probably
Speaker 1: feel a click, kind of like a click pen. But
Speaker 1: what's happening is that the button is typically doing two things.
Speaker 1: It's transferring the force you've just exerted on the button
Speaker 1: onto some piece of electric material, and maybe not directly,
Speaker 1: it might pull back and then release a spring loaded
Speaker 1: hammer which then strikes this piece of electric material that
Speaker 1: makes the material generate an electric charge, and that creates
Speaker 1: a difference of voltage between two little electrodes and causes
Speaker 1: a small spark to fly between them. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, pushing down on the button also releases a
Speaker 1: valve that opens up the pathway to the fuel chamber,
Speaker 1: so beutane gas escapes at that same moment, so the
Speaker 1: beautane gas starts to come out of the chamber through
Speaker 1: a nozzle at the same time as a spark is
Speaker 1: flying across the nozzle and that ignites the escaping gas
Speaker 1: and you get a flame. So you see this in
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of lighters, including like pocket lighters,
Speaker 1: but also the utility lighters that I think about, like
Speaker 1: the ones that have the very long stems and use
Speaker 1: them to light candles or fireplaces, that kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: they typically have the piezo electric approach as opposed to
Speaker 1: a faroh cirium kind of lighting system. So you can
Speaker 1: find lighters like this that actually fit into lighter cases,
Speaker 1: like the ones made famous by Zippo. So if you
Speaker 1: preferred that mechanism to the faro syrium traditional type of lighter,
Speaker 1: you could swap them out, and you can take out
Speaker 1: one lighter and you put another one in the same case.
Speaker 1: And a neat thing about this particular type of lighter
Speaker 1: is that although it uses an electric spark to ignite
Speaker 1: a flame, there's no need for a battery or anything
Speaker 1: like that. There's no source of electricity apart from the
Speaker 1: piece of electric material. So as long as that material
Speaker 1: is inside the lighter, and as long as the mechanism
Speaker 1: that exerts mechanical stress onto the material is still working,
Speaker 1: you should still be able to generate sparks. One other
Speaker 1: type of lighter I should mention before I close out
Speaker 1: this episode works on yet another principle, and this would
Speaker 1: be the old fashioned car cigarette lighters. And you don't
Speaker 1: typically see these in cars anymore, at least not as
Speaker 1: a standard option, but it used to be a really
Speaker 1: common feature. So they look like little knobs that are
Speaker 1: typically somewhere in the dashboard and you would push it
Speaker 1: in and it would remain pushed in for a short
Speaker 1: while before it would hop back out, kind of like
Speaker 1: a toaster. You would then pull the knob out of
Speaker 1: the dashboard and the other end from the handle would
Speaker 1: be glowing red hot, and you would apply that into
Speaker 1: whatever it was he wanted to light, which more often
Speaker 1: than not was a cigarette, and the heat was greater
Speaker 1: than the ignition temperature of the material and it starts
Speaker 1: to burn. Now, I have a distinct memory of being
Speaker 1: a kid and my dad patiently explaining to me that
Speaker 1: the cigarette lighter on the dashboard of our old Dodge
Speaker 1: Dart would in fact get super super hot. He was
Speaker 1: trying to teach me to be careful and not to
Speaker 1: play with it, right, because this was in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when such things were common, And I remember I
Speaker 1: was a particularly dumb kid, No big surprise there. You
Speaker 1: guys all know who I am. And I immediately didn't
Speaker 1: believe him. So I touched it and I burnt myself
Speaker 1: because I was dumb. But I learned a valuable lesson,
Speaker 1: one that my dad was telling the truth, and to
Speaker 1: that the facts. Car cigarette lighters get really really hot.
Speaker 1: But how do they get hot. Well, in the end
Speaker 1: of the car cigarette lighter, the business end, the end
Speaker 1: that lights stuff. There's a coil of wire, and it's
Speaker 1: typically made from something like nichrome, which is nickel chrome,
Speaker 1: and it's a generic term for a group of alloys
Speaker 1: that are made up of surprise, surprise, nickel and chrome
Speaker 1: and sometimes other stuff like iron. This material has a
Speaker 1: pretty high resistivity. That means it's resistant to electrical current
Speaker 1: flowing through that material and quick refresh. You can think
Speaker 1: of all materials everywhere as being on a spectrum of conductivity.
Speaker 1: At one end extreme end of that spectrum, you have
Speaker 1: stuff that allows electricity to pass without any resistance at all.
Speaker 1: The electrons just flow through it, there's no problem there.
Speaker 1: These would be super conductors, and typically we don't see
Speaker 1: superconductors unless we have some very special circumstances involved, such
Speaker 1: is cooling stuff down to near absolute zero. On the
Speaker 1: opposite end of the spectrum, you have material that pretty
Speaker 1: much prevents any electrical current from passing through that material
Speaker 1: at all. It just stops. These would be insulators. Nichrome
Speaker 1: resists the flow of electricity. It allows it to move through,
Speaker 1: but it resists the flow, and in the process the
Speaker 1: metal heats up as some of that energy from the
Speaker 1: electricity gets converted over into heat. So if you had
Speaker 1: a coil of this stuff, and you passed an electric
Speaker 1: current through it, the stuff heats up. And that's the
Speaker 1: basic principle behind inventions like the electric stove and electric
Speaker 1: space heaters. They use wires or uh components like this
Speaker 1: with high resistivity to convert electrical current into heat. Now, well,
Speaker 1: when it's not in use, the car cigarette lighter isn't
Speaker 1: in contact with the electrodes that would otherwise push electric
Speaker 1: current through the lighter. But when you pressed the lighter in,
Speaker 1: it would engage with those electrodes and the current would
Speaker 1: come from the car's overall electrical circuit. Inside the lighter
Speaker 1: is a spring, so it compresses as you push it in,
Speaker 1: and there's a little retaining clip that would engage when
Speaker 1: it was pushed all the way in and would hold
Speaker 1: the cigarette lighter in that compressed state, so it's in
Speaker 1: contact with those electrodes. But the clip, the retaining clip
Speaker 1: was made from a bimetallic material. Now, as the name implies,
Speaker 1: bimetallic stuff is made up of two metals, and in
Speaker 1: this case, it's a strip that's made up of two
Speaker 1: different materials that expand at different rates when they get hot.
Speaker 1: So you press the lighter in the current goes through
Speaker 1: the nichrome wire, the wire heats up and the biometallic
Speaker 1: restraining clips starts to get hot until one side of
Speaker 1: the clip begins to expand faster than the other and
Speaker 1: it starts to curl away. Eventually that bends the clip
Speaker 1: enough so that the spring is released and the cigarette
Speaker 1: lighter pops back out from the dashboard. It disc engages
Speaker 1: from the electrodes and you're able to pull it out
Speaker 1: the dashboard and that end is super hot. These days,
Speaker 1: you typically seen car manufacturers offer this as an electrical
Speaker 1: outlet rather than a cigarette lighter, and you could plug
Speaker 1: something again, like a converter so that you can plug
Speaker 1: in your your cell phone chargers, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But occasionally you can find car manufacturers that offer it
Speaker 1: as an option or you can get as an aftermarket
Speaker 1: thing for your vehicle. But really we've seen a massive
Speaker 1: decline in car cigarette lighters over the years, as we've
Speaker 1: also seen a decline in cigarette smoking in general, which
Speaker 1: I considered to be a good thing. So there you
Speaker 1: have it. That's how lighters work, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to have a few lighters just in
Speaker 1: case of emergencies. Such as loss of power. A good
Speaker 1: piezo electric lighter, particularly one of those utility lighters I
Speaker 1: was talking about that half a long stem that could
Speaker 1: be really handy if you need to light stuff like
Speaker 1: candles or lamps in the case of a power power failure.
Speaker 1: It's also good to know how to use pharaoh sirium
Speaker 1: like pharaoh sirium sticks or fire starter sticks. I think
Speaker 1: it's a must have component if you ever plan on
Speaker 1: doing stuff like camping, or you want to have like
Speaker 1: a survivalist gear package, you gotta have fire starter sticks.
Speaker 1: It's a reliable way to generate the sparks you need
Speaker 1: to start campfires. You don't have to worry about water
Speaker 1: ruining your matches, or you don't have to carry combustible fuel,
Speaker 1: which in itself could be a danger. The good old
Speaker 1: fire sticks will really serve you well in those cases.
Speaker 1: But that wraps up this episode. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future topics for tech stuff, let me know.
Speaker 1: You can get in touch with me on social media
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those is
Speaker 1: text stuff h s. W LL look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tex Stuff is a production of I heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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