Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and guys,
Speaker 1: it's time to get real. See. Sometimes when I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about what tech topic I should cover for my next episode,
Speaker 1: you know, I get really excited and inspired right away,
Speaker 1: and I just I'm off to the races. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I struggle for the better part of an hour at
Speaker 1: some days to figure out what I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and and preferably I need to pick something that I
Speaker 1: haven't talked about a billion times before, which is tricky
Speaker 1: to do when you've got episodes. And sometimes I get
Speaker 1: an idea that I first dismiss as being totally stupid,
Speaker 1: but then I changed my mind and to side, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it anyway. And sometimes those days where I
Speaker 1: come up with the dumb idea happened to coincide with
Speaker 1: the days where I've been sitting for an hour desperate
Speaker 1: to come up with a topic. And so you see
Speaker 1: where this is going. This is why today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about fire. Did somebody say fire no god. No. Um,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, I've been blessed with a special guest today.
Speaker 1: Would you please introduce herself to all these nice people. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm almona midler, and I'm a matchmaker that I didn't
Speaker 1: quite understand with matchmaking entailed, so I'm quite good at
Speaker 1: starting fires. Yes, so um, for those who do not know,
Speaker 1: I have a sordid history with the Georgia Renaissance Festival,
Speaker 1: and it was there, I believe where my path first
Speaker 1: crossed with that of Alamon as uh the village matchmaker.
Speaker 1: And um, I guess it's only fitting that for this
Speaker 1: episode I have a pyro enthusiast join us for the show.
Speaker 1: So Alamona, thank you for being here. Hey, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. You look quite familiar. I can't quite
Speaker 1: put my match stick on it, but yeah, you see
Speaker 1: a lot of faces at the festival. I'm I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are a lot of I have one of those
Speaker 1: faces too, like you know, one of the ones that
Speaker 1: lots of people have. Um, because we let's get your
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland mask at the Tech stuff store today. No
Speaker 1: they're not really, They're okay, but we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: stuff like matches, which I understand you consider yourself somewhat
Speaker 1: of an expert on which I find perplexing. I am
Speaker 1: an expert on matches. It's it's a little wooden stick thing,
Speaker 1: and then and then you you you you strike the
Speaker 1: end of it and and it in it, and then
Speaker 1: it goes boom, and then the pretty orange stuff comes out.
Speaker 1: It's very hot. It's odd to me that you would
Speaker 1: be so familiar with them, because the matches as you
Speaker 1: describe them weren't available until the early nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: if my math is correct, the renaissances before times of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, my whole life has been a lie.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, all right, Well, Alimona, I'm glad you could
Speaker 1: be here because I'm going to explain to you the
Speaker 1: history of matches, and if you have things you want
Speaker 1: to say or questions you want to ask, then we can,
Speaker 1: you know, really focus on that. And there's sometimes where
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you a question just to see
Speaker 1: what you know about things, and when we find out
Speaker 1: the depth of your ignorance, I will then illuminate by
Speaker 1: explaining exactly what the reality of the situation is. I
Speaker 1: really like the word illuminate, but I didn't quite like
Speaker 1: the word ignorance. I think the man explaining part of
Speaker 1: the episode is just be on. So we're gonna begin,
Speaker 1: as I said, with the history of matches. You know,
Speaker 1: you might think of it as the predecessor to the lighter. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lighter, lighter than what Okay, right, what's a heavier?
Speaker 1: Is there a heavier? No? Okay, this is this is
Speaker 1: how this is gonna go. U's a lighter thing that
Speaker 1: produces flame over and over and over again, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you would love them. And interesting thing is that the
Speaker 1: modern match and the modern lighter actually were developed around
Speaker 1: the same time. They were co developed at around the
Speaker 1: same time. We would normally think the matches must have
Speaker 1: come much earlier, but modern matches rely very heavily on
Speaker 1: something you and I completely lack chemistry. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about that, but we're going to start with matches.
Speaker 1: And really, when we talk about matches, you gotta look
Speaker 1: all the way back to China, the country, not the
Speaker 1: type of dishes. I can see your mind working right
Speaker 1: in front of me, Alimona. I love the way China
Speaker 1: sounds when you break it. Yeah, So the country of China, Uh,
Speaker 1: they began to experiment using sticks dipped in sulfur. And
Speaker 1: this was not the type of match that you would
Speaker 1: strike against a surface and have it ignite. Instead, it
Speaker 1: was a way of lighting something and having it burn
Speaker 1: at a controlled rate so that you could transfer the
Speaker 1: fire from one place to another, for example, from say
Speaker 1: a roaring fire to a candle. You would want to
Speaker 1: be able to move that fire around. And as we
Speaker 1: all know, moving fire just with your hands is a
Speaker 1: bad idea because it's because it's hot, but it's very fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we're also going to stress to our listeners
Speaker 1: playing with fire is a dangerous thing once you get
Speaker 1: past the tingling sensation. Okay, all right now, Alamona, really
Speaker 1: let's let's reaf becus here. So those matches don't really
Speaker 1: fit our modern description of the word, and they would
Speaker 1: not really play into the type of strike matches that
Speaker 1: we think of when we hear the word match. So
Speaker 1: instead you have to go all the way up to
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, so a bit late in the day
Speaker 1: for you, Alimona, an old woman diving, I might be
Speaker 1: as old as years old. That's interesting, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you would definitely adhere to the philosophy. That's better to
Speaker 1: burn out than to fade away. Good one, thank you.
Speaker 1: So in the in the in the seventeenth century, there
Speaker 1: was this, uh, this German alchemist Hinnig Brandt, thank you.
Speaker 1: So he was attempting to do what many alchemists were
Speaker 1: trying to do. Oh, I know what an alchemist is.
Speaker 1: That's like a scientist, not really uh, predecessor to science.
Speaker 1: I would argue closer. I would argue closer to Professor
Speaker 1: Snape than a scientist. Yes, alchemy is all about the
Speaker 1: attempt to figure out ways to turn base metals or
Speaker 1: base materials into gold, which to this day perplexes me
Speaker 1: because alamono, just just follow along with me here. Alright,
Speaker 1: I'm going to explain to you the concept of supply
Speaker 1: and demand as well as that of value, right something
Speaker 1: I like, Oh boy, I'm glad I didn't say that.
Speaker 1: So gold people ascribe great value to gold. Right, gold
Speaker 1: is valuable. It lets you buy stuff. If you amass
Speaker 1: a lot of gold, you have wealth. Correct. Wealth concept
Speaker 1: foreign to me, but yes, yes, but you understand the
Speaker 1: idea of wealth, even though you may never have possessed
Speaker 1: it yourself. Right. So alchemists wanted to find a way
Speaker 1: to turn other types of stuff into gold. But if
Speaker 1: you could do that, if you could turn say lead
Speaker 1: into gold, then you would suddenly have a surplus of gold.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, in fact, the chief thing
Speaker 1: that makes gold valuable is its scarcity. So if you've
Speaker 1: taken something that was valuable because it was scarce, and
Speaker 1: you made a whole bunch more of it, what do
Speaker 1: you think happens lots and lots of money? Is that right? Okay?
Speaker 1: All right, so you're you're you're about a step behind me. No,
Speaker 1: if you have too much of it. If you have
Speaker 1: a lot of this gold that was valuable because of
Speaker 1: its scarcity, is no longer scarce, It is no longer valuable. Yes,
Speaker 1: it means that you would have way too much of it,
Speaker 1: And yeah, up until the point where you had a
Speaker 1: an abundance of gold on the market, in which case
Speaker 1: the value would plummet. So I never understood alchemy from
Speaker 1: that perspective. But um, let's get a dig a little deeper,
Speaker 1: because boy, it gets way more weird than that. So
Speaker 1: one of the important advancements that made matches possible was
Speaker 1: the discovery of phosphorus. So phosphorus is it's it's a
Speaker 1: naturally occurring element, but usually we wouldn't. It's usually bound
Speaker 1: up in other things. The less said about that, the
Speaker 1: better with you here, Almona. But it's bound up with
Speaker 1: other things, and then if we can refine it, then
Speaker 1: we can use it as a component in things like matches.
Speaker 1: So Hennig Brand discovered how to isolate phosphorus. That's not
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do, but it is what
Speaker 1: he effectively ended up doing. Ah, he isolated phosphorus from urine. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought I would blin inside you we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about pa science. Yeah, that's right. You get it
Speaker 1: all out there, Alonna. So are you saying that when
Speaker 1: when I use the privy, I'm sitting on a gold mine,
Speaker 1: or rather a phosphorus mine. Hinnig. Well, you're certainly sitting
Speaker 1: on a phosphorus mine, Hinnig Brand, But perhaps it was
Speaker 1: a gold mine. Here was his line of yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what Brand was thinking. No, you're you're on
Speaker 1: the right track. He was sitting there thinking, you know what,
Speaker 1: he's kind of yellow. Gold's yellow. Maybe p is yellow
Speaker 1: because there's gold in them. The arp, so he thought
Speaker 1: how do I get the P away and keep the gold?
Speaker 1: Alchemist was so smart back then, I thought you'd think so.
Speaker 1: So here's what he did. Uh stop me. If you
Speaker 1: heard this before. He goes and collects a lot of P,
Speaker 1: go ahead and ask me how much is a lot
Speaker 1: of P? How much is a lot of gallons of
Speaker 1: the stuff? How many friends did he have? It was
Speaker 1: just a Super Bowl weekends. How many friends did he have?
Speaker 1: More fewer by the end of it than he did
Speaker 1: at the beginning of it. I'm sure that I realize
Speaker 1: how few friends I have. I don't know who I
Speaker 1: could just walk up to and say, like, hey, would
Speaker 1: you mind yeah this gallon jug and yes, it is
Speaker 1: exactly the way I need you to to do it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the what you're thinking, that's what I need.
Speaker 1: So he takes all this P and then of course
Speaker 1: he puts it into a giant fat because I mean,
Speaker 1: what else are you going to do with it? And
Speaker 1: then he boiled it. He boiled the P. I know
Speaker 1: you're thinking, I've smelled the privs on a hot day
Speaker 1: at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. That's what you're thinking, isn't
Speaker 1: it all? Yeah, that's that's a that's a smell that
Speaker 1: will linger in your thoughts forever. Trust me. The first
Speaker 1: year I did it was still haven't forgotten. So soups gross.
Speaker 1: He boils it, which ends up evaporating a lot of
Speaker 1: the water out of the content of the urine, and
Speaker 1: what was left behind was described as a surupy substance.
Speaker 1: No do not. And then as the stuff was heating up,
Speaker 1: it started to glow red hot. As it cooled, it
Speaker 1: turned black and became hard. If your urine turns red
Speaker 1: and in black, maybe you should go see it or something. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So he then takes some of the hardened black stuff
Speaker 1: and he mix mixes it with some of the red
Speaker 1: hot glowing stuff and ends up noticing that it caught fire.
Speaker 1: It just combusts, It bursts into flame, and he didn't
Speaker 1: realize that what he had discovered was phosphorus. He actually thought,
Speaker 1: originally and others did too, that he had come across
Speaker 1: the fabled Philosopher's stone. Um not that kind of stone
Speaker 1: in urine, And eventually he referred to the stuff as
Speaker 1: cold fire because he knows that this phosphorus would glow
Speaker 1: in the dark. It wouldn't give off heat, but would
Speaker 1: glow in the dark weird. So if one were to
Speaker 1: refine this phosphorus further, you would eventually get to what's
Speaker 1: called white phosphorus. Sometimes it's called yellow phosphorus because it's
Speaker 1: not really white white. Uh. This stuff is very dangerous
Speaker 1: because it ignites upon exposure to air. That sounds fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very much like you. So I must possess this magic.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be for long it uh. So it ignites
Speaker 1: as soon as it it encounters oxygen. What's happening is
Speaker 1: that the phosphorus molecules. Just think of pretty thoughts, Alimona.
Speaker 1: I'll be back with you in a second. Uh, quietly
Speaker 1: think of pretty thoughts. Phosphorus molecules very weak molecular bonds, uh,
Speaker 1: and oxygen when it encounters phosphorus breaks those molecular bonds,
Speaker 1: and then the phosphorus bonds with the oxygen in an
Speaker 1: exothermic reaction, which means it's a reaction that gives off
Speaker 1: a lot of heat. And because it gives off a
Speaker 1: lot of heat very quickly, uh, it ignites, and so
Speaker 1: you have the spontaneously combustible material white phosphorus. All right,
Speaker 1: So that would become important for matches, but we don't
Speaker 1: get two matches just yet. We're still talking about the
Speaker 1: basic components that allow matches to become a thing. We will, however,
Speaker 1: talk about matches in just a moment, but before we
Speaker 1: do that, Almona, we're gonna take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. Please don't set them on fire, not
Speaker 1: even a little bit. Okay, we're just gonna take a break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. The studio remarkably is still standing and not
Speaker 1: currently on fire. Alimonia, you're still here. I know. It's
Speaker 1: thank goodness. We have all those blankets. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: move on. We just finished talking about peace science, which
Speaker 1: you were I could tell, So we're gonna move on.
Speaker 1: And now we're going to talk about a person named
Speaker 1: Jean Chancel. Oh he sounds pretty It's a fancy dude.
Speaker 1: Jean Chancel found a way to create a match using
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction. And this is probably the most hardcore
Speaker 1: metal way of lighting a match I have ever heard about.
Speaker 1: So okay, not that kind of all right, no, like
Speaker 1: like rock and roll metal. So he took a splint
Speaker 1: a piece of wood, and he coded it in a
Speaker 1: substance called potassium chlorate and he all so put in
Speaker 1: the same on the same mixture, some sugar and some
Speaker 1: sticky gum, and the gum was to bind everything together.
Speaker 1: It was to hold the sugar and the potassium chlorate
Speaker 1: together on the end of the stick. And then he
Speaker 1: dipped the end of the stick into a jar of
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid and that caused the stick to ignite, which is,
Speaker 1: like I said, super hardcore when you're using sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: to light your matches. So here's what's going on. I
Speaker 1: want to explain to you the actual chemical process, the
Speaker 1: reaction that's happening, so that we understand how this technology works.
Speaker 1: So potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent. Now, Alumona,
Speaker 1: I know you know this from personal experience, hands on experience.
Speaker 1: But fire needs three things to be fire. And it's
Speaker 1: not magic, it's it's not love either. You want to
Speaker 1: give one more, more, more shot, you can give me
Speaker 1: you one of the three a spring day at the
Speaker 1: Georgia Renaissance Fest. Okay, none of those three things are necessary. No,
Speaker 1: it needs fuel, it needs heat, and it needs an oxidizer. Typically,
Speaker 1: the oxidizer for most fires that we encounter is the air, oxygen,
Speaker 1: oxygen as an oxidizer. Those three things are necessary. If
Speaker 1: you're missing any one of those three things, you cannot
Speaker 1: make fire. And if you have a fire, the fire
Speaker 1: will extinguish. So if you run out fuel, the fire
Speaker 1: goes out right. If you no longer have an oxidizer,
Speaker 1: the fire cannot burn anymore. If if the heat is
Speaker 1: removed from the fire, it will not continuously burn. It'll
Speaker 1: the the the chemical reaction that is fire will stop.
Speaker 1: So potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent. The sugar
Speaker 1: is fuel UH. In fact, we all know sugar is
Speaker 1: fuel because if you ever had a lot of sugar
Speaker 1: like I suspect Alamona has had, you will be very
Speaker 1: energetic for at least a short while. And then potassium
Speaker 1: chlorate when it decomposes under heat, it releases molecular oxygen.
Speaker 1: So thus you get the oxidizing effect there. All right,
Speaker 1: So you've got everything you need mixed up. There. You've
Speaker 1: got the fuel and the oxidizer. There. You need to
Speaker 1: have the heat to start the reaction. Here's where the
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid comes in. When you dip this mixture of
Speaker 1: sugar and UH and potassium chlorate together in the sulfuric acid.
Speaker 1: It the acid actually acts as sort of a catalyst.
Speaker 1: It creates this exothermic chemical reaction. Again, exothermic means it's
Speaker 1: giving awful lot of heat. So now you've got the
Speaker 1: third part of that triangle, right, You've got the fuel,
Speaker 1: you have the oxidizer, you have the heat. The match
Speaker 1: catches on fire. But the only way it works, the
Speaker 1: only way it works is if you have a jar
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid. So while this was effective, it was
Speaker 1: not uh something that a lot of people wanted because
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid is extremely reactive stuff off and if it
Speaker 1: touches organic material, it tends to char it not burn
Speaker 1: it like catch it on fire. It won't ignite, but
Speaker 1: it will char. Like if you just poured sulphuric acid
Speaker 1: on wood, the wood would char from that. So you
Speaker 1: definitely don't want to get it on yourself because you
Speaker 1: will suffer terrible injuries like Phantom of the Opera level injuries.
Speaker 1: It's a reference to that that. I guess you wouldn't get Alamona,
Speaker 1: but don't worry. I'll show it to you later. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so so this didn't this did not get widespread adoption
Speaker 1: because it was not practical. It was effective, but not practical. Also,
Speaker 1: the ignition was so usually pretty spectacular, so in other words,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a small flame like or a small
Speaker 1: spark and then a flame. It was very bright, very loud,
Speaker 1: spontaneous combustion type flame. The stick goes boom, The stick
Speaker 1: goes boom, as you did, uh so eloquently put it earlier. Yes,
Speaker 1: in this case you were right. So this was an
Speaker 1: early example of using chemistry to ignit of fire as
Speaker 1: opposed to the old style of rubbing two sticks together
Speaker 1: kind of friction approach. Now, as I said, sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: is super duper dangerous all on its own, and this
Speaker 1: particular reaction was really dangerous as well. It also was
Speaker 1: very smelly. The the smoke it would give off had
Speaker 1: a foul odor. So there were a lot of downsides
Speaker 1: to this particular approach. Let's move forward to eighty six.
Speaker 1: Now we have an Englishman to talk about, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: one of your fellow Brits. This English chemist was named
Speaker 1: John Walker, and he was working on this problem two.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's that's the English for you. So he
Speaker 1: wanted to pair chemicals together, so those two chemicals could
Speaker 1: burst into flame with a substance like cardboard or wood
Speaker 1: that could burn more slowly, so you would get an
Speaker 1: initial burst of flame with the chemicals that flame. That
Speaker 1: flame would then set fire to some sort of substance
Speaker 1: that can last longer. It would burn more slowly, and
Speaker 1: thus you could hold the other end as a handle.
Speaker 1: These are the components we need for a working match.
Speaker 1: We need something we can hold as a handle that's
Speaker 1: preferably not on fire. That's because we're touching it, and
Speaker 1: we have to have an end that is on fire
Speaker 1: or that can at least ignite, and then catch that
Speaker 1: end on fire. So that was the whole idea here,
Speaker 1: and touching fire is bad, right. So he was experimenting
Speaker 1: with different chemical mixtures, but he accidentally dragged a stick
Speaker 1: that was coded in these different chemical mixtures against the
Speaker 1: hearth of his fireplace and discovered that just the friction
Speaker 1: of moving this chemical coated stick against the heart generated
Speaker 1: enough heat to ignite the stick. So he invented a
Speaker 1: strike anywhere match. I matched that because the chemicals that
Speaker 1: were on the end of it, we're in the right mixture.
Speaker 1: They just need to be heated up enough to hit
Speaker 1: ignition and then puff burst into flame. So pretty exciting
Speaker 1: for him. He immediately saw the value of this discovery.
Speaker 1: He immediately saw the utility of it, but he also
Speaker 1: thought it was far too useful for him to make
Speaker 1: it secret. His friends were actually suggesting, hey, you should
Speaker 1: patent that. A guy named Faraday, very important person in science.
Speaker 1: I don't expect you to know him. Okay, fair enough. Faraday,
Speaker 1: uh recommended to Walker, hey you should patent that, and
Speaker 1: he said, no, nonsense, nonsense, I'm not going to patent
Speaker 1: it because it's far too interesting and important. People should
Speaker 1: be able to do with us whatever they want. And
Speaker 1: so that allowed a guy named Samuel Jones, another Englishman,
Speaker 1: very exciting name, Sammy Jones of London. He took the
Speaker 1: exact same approach as Walker, and so he began to
Speaker 1: market his own Strike Anywhere matches based on the exact
Speaker 1: same formula that Walker had created. And he called them Lucifers.
Speaker 1: Bringer of light. Yeah, a little little dark and and spooky,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that's also bringer of light. And Henry,
Speaker 1: the leader of the church, will protectors from lucier I'm
Speaker 1: sure that excellent. It's a good Anglican reference. So this
Speaker 1: began around eighty nine. And these matches again could be
Speaker 1: struck on any surface and would ignite, and they were
Speaker 1: still pretty spectacular matches, like the burst of flame was
Speaker 1: pretty bright and violent, also smelly. Again you identify with
Speaker 1: that and there, and they were more than a little
Speaker 1: bit dangerous. And other chemists over the time would play
Speaker 1: with different mixtures, and some of them would even use
Speaker 1: white phosphorus. Now you remember what I said earlier about
Speaker 1: white phosphorus rights this, this is the stuff that when
Speaker 1: you refine it down to white phosphorus, if it's exposed
Speaker 1: to the air, it will catch fire. That's what I
Speaker 1: want for Christmas. In case you went, well, they made
Speaker 1: matches out of the stuff, so you there are actual
Speaker 1: matches that had white phosphorus. And the idea was that
Speaker 1: they had a slight coating on the outside so that
Speaker 1: it wasn't constantly exposed to air, and that striking it
Speaker 1: would break that coating exposed the white phosphorus to air.
Speaker 1: It would then have this exothermic reaction I was talking
Speaker 1: about that would ignite the end of the match stick
Speaker 1: and you would get this very bright, powerful, uh light.
Speaker 1: The match however, It also meant that if the match
Speaker 1: heads were damaged at all and encountered the air, they
Speaker 1: would ignore spontaneously. So typically you would have a container
Speaker 1: that was air tight to keep these matches inside, because
Speaker 1: you didn't want to risk the danger of the matches
Speaker 1: going off on their own. Because this is all about
Speaker 1: controlled experiences with fire, Alamona, not not just rampant fire,
Speaker 1: lit fire. Your your sympathies lie in different areas than
Speaker 1: my own, but uh, other chemist chemists would play with
Speaker 1: these different approaches, trying to get it just right, and
Speaker 1: over time there was a decision to move away from
Speaker 1: white phosphorus matches, not just because they were dangerous. They
Speaker 1: were incredibly popular by the way. People loved the fact
Speaker 1: that you could strike these against anything. They were very convenient,
Speaker 1: but a misunderstood certainly dangerous because also it was discovered
Speaker 1: that people working in the manufacturing facilities they were making
Speaker 1: these white phosphorus matches, we're starting to get sick and
Speaker 1: they developed an illness that became known. And I am
Speaker 1: not making this up as fossey jaw jaw. Yeah, would
Speaker 1: you like to know the symptoms or you want to
Speaker 1: take a guess? I think that was my grandmother's name,
Speaker 1: Old lady, false jaw. I was expecting you to say
Speaker 1: you would be wearing a bowler hat and doing jazz
Speaker 1: hands and wearing a black unitard. I don't understand that
Speaker 1: that's fair, that's a that's a fossy joke. No. Actually,
Speaker 1: this was a truly terrible, terrible disease, and it was
Speaker 1: disfiguring disease. So the exposure to phosphorus vapor would cause
Speaker 1: the bone of the lower jaw to dissolve slowly to
Speaker 1: the point where people had completely would have to have
Speaker 1: their lower jaws removed, moved because if they didn't, then
Speaker 1: the the illness would progress to the point where they
Speaker 1: would experience oregon failure and then die. So this is
Speaker 1: what we call a bad thing. And they would lose
Speaker 1: teeth throughout the process, they'd lose bone mass and their jaws.
Speaker 1: Their jaws would actually give off a greenish white light
Speaker 1: in the dark. They would actually glow a bit from
Speaker 1: all the phosphor that they were or phosphorus that they
Speaker 1: were absorbing. So pretty terrifying stuff. Now, at the time
Speaker 1: that this was happening, it was during the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: which again, Alamona, it's ahead of your time. But the
Speaker 1: peasants talk about revolution. In this case, the peasants also
Speaker 1: were uh in trouble during the Industrial Revolution because they
Speaker 1: were being exploited terribly. So this was a time of
Speaker 1: great industry where you have these huge manufacturing facilities that
Speaker 1: are being built and labor is needed, but labors also plentiful.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who are no longer
Speaker 1: farmers there in there in search for work, so they
Speaker 1: all start looking for places where they can get employment.
Speaker 1: They start joining different facilities, including matchmaking facilities. A lot
Speaker 1: of young women did this. I could work that these
Speaker 1: were the women who were suffering from Fossey jaw Alamona.
Speaker 1: These are not not women that I'm just saying, I'd
Speaker 1: be qualified. From the industrialist point of view, these workers
Speaker 1: were disposable because if someone got sick or died or whatever,
Speaker 1: there were a hundred others who were just desperate for
Speaker 1: a job. So this was a terrible situation where people
Speaker 1: were being exploited and they were getting sick, and it
Speaker 1: all got to the point where the women organized what
Speaker 1: was called the Great match Girls Strike. Was the pun intended,
Speaker 1: It's an excellent question, but it really was like a
Speaker 1: union strike. Uh, they weren't striking matches. I understand that
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, sometimes a pun, a really good pun,
Speaker 1: just falls into it. This time has an unintentional pun. Uh.
Speaker 1: So all four women walked out of a manufacturing company,
Speaker 1: a matchmaking company called Bryant and May in protest of conditions.
Speaker 1: Eventually they were able to win some protections, although a
Speaker 1: lot of the white phosphorus stuff was still largely ignored
Speaker 1: because they were so popular. There was an alternative that
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about in the second, to white phosphorus,
Speaker 1: but nobody wanted those. They wanted the ones you could
Speaker 1: strike anywhere. Well, in nineteen o six there was an organization,
Speaker 1: a group gathering called the International Burn Convention that passed
Speaker 1: prohibitions on white phosphorus matches, and the industry as a
Speaker 1: whole migrated away from them. It took a few more years.
Speaker 1: They kept on doing it for a little while longer,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they stopped, and thus we saw a
Speaker 1: drastic improvement in conditions for workers who were making matches.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was a pretty ironically dark time when
Speaker 1: you look at the conditions that people had to endure
Speaker 1: in order to make these. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the demand for matches at this time it was astounding
Speaker 1: because you're talking about a moment in history where people
Speaker 1: had access to things that would allow them to generate
Speaker 1: light after the sun went down, Alamona, you know that
Speaker 1: when the sun goes down, it's just time to go
Speaker 1: to bed because you can't see nothing that well, there
Speaker 1: was there was that one time where I got a
Speaker 1: little excited in it. Yeah. Well, apart from like conflagrations,
Speaker 1: you don't really see village. It was all bright and
Speaker 1: everyone was happy. That explains why we went from willy
Speaker 1: Nilly on the wash over to Newcastle. There was actually
Speaker 1: a location of the Georgia or in this onncestival. All
Speaker 1: of that is true, by the way you can aller
Speaker 1: the relocation part, I'm not so certain about the yeah
Speaker 1: that part. So this was a change, a social change.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting into a point where people had opportunity
Speaker 1: to have lights in their own homes, whether they were
Speaker 1: you know, lanterns that have been around for ages, but
Speaker 1: now it was easier to light them because you had matches,
Speaker 1: or it was even stuff like gas lamps that were
Speaker 1: starting to be deployed in certain cities. So that meant
Speaker 1: that matches were really sought after, so there was a
Speaker 1: heavy market for them. Fortunately, there were some other smarty
Speaker 1: pants who were coming up with ideas that were alternatives
Speaker 1: to this white phosphorus approach. And I'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more in just a second, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, Alimonia, you're still following me right somewhere?
Speaker 1: I got a little bit lost along the path, he said,
Speaker 1: are you looking for I heard it was a nice
Speaker 1: person named the Quister walking around. Oh yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: different show. I think he dresses like me a bit. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So if you want to know who Alimona
Speaker 1: is talking about with the Quister, you need to listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast Ridiculous History, where the Quister shows up
Speaker 1: and occasionally in in episodes and torments the hosts of
Speaker 1: that show. The hosts that show are are Ben Bolan
Speaker 1: and Noel Brown. Like, I'm tormenting you match made in
Speaker 1: Heaven so similar that it's actually making me regret Quisters
Speaker 1: segments at this point. Alright, So, in the mid to
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, different inventors were using stuff like lead
Speaker 1: ox side and potassium chlorate to kind of tweak matches.
Speaker 1: They were trying to make the matches burn without generating
Speaker 1: as much smelly smoke like, because these still smelled really bad.
Speaker 1: They're very sulfuric um. They were trying to find ways
Speaker 1: so that they were quieter because they were very loud
Speaker 1: when you were striking these matches, the early ones, and
Speaker 1: with a more controlled burn. There was an Austrian scientist
Speaker 1: named Anton von Schrutter who yes, yes, and he used
Speaker 1: red phosphorus instead of white phosphorus, and he did that
Speaker 1: to create a more stable match, one that would not
Speaker 1: be prone to spontaneous combustion. So, okay, well you're sad,
Speaker 1: but most people meant that if you were to accidentally
Speaker 1: scratch the end of the match head, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it bursting into flame. And this is
Speaker 1: what paved the way to the modern safety match. So
Speaker 1: a safety match is a very clever invention in which
Speaker 1: the ingredients needed for combustion are not all contained within
Speaker 1: the match head itself, So you divide them. You put
Speaker 1: some of the ingredients on the match head, but you
Speaker 1: put the other ingredients on the striking surface that you're
Speaker 1: going to use to ignite the match. And this is
Speaker 1: how you make it safe because it's not gonna even
Speaker 1: if you rub two matches together, they're lacking the ingredients
Speaker 1: that will allow them to combust, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about them like jostling around and then setting
Speaker 1: themselves on fire. Uh So in a modern matchbook, you
Speaker 1: can think of one half of the ingredients is being
Speaker 1: on the match stick. The other half are on that
Speaker 1: little strip that you use when you strike the match
Speaker 1: and ignite it. And this is why, uh you don't
Speaker 1: have to, you know, freak out about those matches. Just
Speaker 1: like hitting the ground or something. They'll never ignite unless
Speaker 1: it just happens to be hot enough to hit their
Speaker 1: ignition temperature, because that will still cause them to ignite.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure if you've ever certainly feels like
Speaker 1: it gets hot enough for that. But if you ever
Speaker 1: bring like an unlit match close to a flame, you'll
Speaker 1: see that at some point it will burst into flame
Speaker 1: itself because you will have heated the end of that
Speaker 1: match to its ignition point. But don't do that. It's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Don't listen. It's not almona show, it's my show. And
Speaker 1: it's also why, um, these matches you can't replicate that
Speaker 1: cool move you might see and you won't know this alumona,
Speaker 1: But in a movie where someone like strikes a match
Speaker 1: against like the bottom of their shoe or a brick,
Speaker 1: and it just burst in the flame, and then they
Speaker 1: light something cool with it and they shake the match
Speaker 1: stick out. You can't do that with safety matches unless
Speaker 1: you happen to have coated the bottom of your shoe
Speaker 1: with the other component needed to create combustion, which I
Speaker 1: guess you could do if you really wanted to. Uh Now,
Speaker 1: And there's still are non safety matches. They're still matches
Speaker 1: that will ignite if you strike them against any surface.
Speaker 1: You can still buy them. They are not made out
Speaker 1: of white phosphorus anymore. They're made of of other materials,
Speaker 1: but they still do the same thing, and you can
Speaker 1: strike them against any surface and they will ignite, uh
Speaker 1: if they as long as the friction allows them to
Speaker 1: reach their ignition temperature. As for modern safety matches, they
Speaker 1: tend to have potassium chlorate as well as an oxidizing agent,
Speaker 1: or as the oxidizing agent, I should say, And they
Speaker 1: have antimately sulfide, which sounds like a relative of yours
Speaker 1: and got little right, And then the striking surface would
Speaker 1: have the coding of red phosphorus, So the red phosphorus
Speaker 1: is actually on whatever surface you're supposed to strike the
Speaker 1: match on, and so bringing them together and creating friction
Speaker 1: is enough to light the little suckers. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do another episode where I'm gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about lighters, but I want to give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of of a preview of that, Alimona, because this
Speaker 1: is you seem to be fascinated by the concept of
Speaker 1: a lighter. So I'm going to talk about the earliest
Speaker 1: thing that people refer to as a lighter, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be the clothes of this episode. So lighters,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, we're being developed around the same
Speaker 1: time that matches were. It's not like we got matches
Speaker 1: right and then we moved on to lighters. They were
Speaker 1: independent lines of invention and innovation. So the first lighter,
Speaker 1: most people agree, was made by a German chemist named
Speaker 1: Johann Wolfgang Dobbert Reiner. Great name, he wins, he wins
Speaker 1: the names. Yeah, So he made numerous contributions to chemistry.
Speaker 1: He it's not just the guy who made the first lighter.
Speaker 1: He did lots of stuff. But for our purposes, the
Speaker 1: thing we want to look at is this lighter that
Speaker 1: he made, the Dobbert Reiner lamp, and this was an
Speaker 1: ingenious invention. It is also tricky to describe without pictures,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna try and do it, and Alimona, honestly,
Speaker 1: the only way I can read books just through the pictures. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to paint you a word picture with my words.
Speaker 1: But if you have questions, like honestly, if you have
Speaker 1: trouble imagining what I'm saying, tell me, because that would
Speaker 1: tell me, oh, I should explain this a different way
Speaker 1: so that the listeners at home also understand it. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna play a truly valuable service here. Welcome. Okay,
Speaker 1: well just take it seriously. Here we go. Now, first
Speaker 1: we're gonna start imagining that you have a glass jar
Speaker 1: and you have a lid that would fit on top
Speaker 1: of that glass jar. Okay, so that's what we're starting from.
Speaker 1: The glass jar has sulfuric acid in it. That's that
Speaker 1: stuff I was talking about earlier, super reactive. It can
Speaker 1: char you know, skin and would uh and you definitely
Speaker 1: don't want to touch it. So anyway, you've got this
Speaker 1: jar of sulfuric acid. Now imagine that that you've taken
Speaker 1: the lid off of this jar and you attached to
Speaker 1: the lid a cylinder of glass. Okay, it's open at
Speaker 1: either end, except that you've glued one end to the
Speaker 1: bottom side of the lid of the jar, all right,
Speaker 1: And now imagine that you have poked a hole in
Speaker 1: the top of the lid on the other side of
Speaker 1: that open end of the cylinder, and you put a
Speaker 1: valve there, which only allows air to pass through if
Speaker 1: the valve is open, but it's closed. Now, this means
Speaker 1: that if you were to put the lid on the jar,
Speaker 1: you would be pushing that cylinder down through the sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid in the jar. And because the air is trapped
Speaker 1: inside the cylinder, it will push the sulfuric acid out
Speaker 1: of the way. It will displace it, so the level
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid will rise a bit in the jar.
Speaker 1: The cylinder inside will remain just full of air. The
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid can't come up in there. If you're having
Speaker 1: trouble imagining this, just imagine what happens if you take
Speaker 1: a straw like a drinking straw and you put your
Speaker 1: finger over the top of the drinking straw and then
Speaker 1: you put it down into liquid. The liquid doesn't go
Speaker 1: up in the straw because the air pressure inside the
Speaker 1: straw keeps it out. All right, good, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we're on the same page. Okay. So you've got this
Speaker 1: cylinder in it. It keeps the sulfuric acid out because
Speaker 1: it's air tight at the moment, because the valve is shut. Now,
Speaker 1: also imagine that dangling in the center of the cylinder,
Speaker 1: so you've you've attached some form of line on the
Speaker 1: underside of the lid as well. At where the cylinder,
Speaker 1: at the top of the cylinder is dangling. Inside the
Speaker 1: cylinder is a piece of zinc. Okay, the metal zinc.
Speaker 1: It is attached to a tether. It's dangling in the
Speaker 1: middle of this cylinder. Still, there's nothing touching anything else, right,
Speaker 1: The sulfuric acid isn't coming into contact with anything inside
Speaker 1: the cylinder, all right. Now, imagine you open the valve
Speaker 1: on the top of the lid. So now you've created
Speaker 1: away for the air inside the cylinder to escape. The
Speaker 1: pressure from the sulfuric acid will push against the air
Speaker 1: inside that cylinder. It will make some of that air escape.
Speaker 1: The sulfuric acid will start to come into where the
Speaker 1: cylinder is and actually make contact with the zinc. You
Speaker 1: close off the VALVEU you shut the valve. Valve shut.
Speaker 1: Now the sulfuric acid is going to react with that zinc,
Speaker 1: and that reaction gives off hydrogen gas. So little bubbles
Speaker 1: will form on this zinc, and the bubbles will bubble
Speaker 1: up into the interior of the cylinder. And because the
Speaker 1: valve is shut, the bubbles have nowhere to go. The
Speaker 1: bubble start building up. That starts to push the sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid back out again because you're increasing the pressure inside
Speaker 1: the cylinder. But now it's not air, just regular air
Speaker 1: that's in that cylinder. Now it's hydrogen gas. So you've
Speaker 1: got a cylinder filled with hydrogen gas. If you open
Speaker 1: up that valve again, you'll release hydrogen gas. Okay, So
Speaker 1: that's the basic part of this lamp. The next part
Speaker 1: was another component on top of the lid, the top side,
Speaker 1: not the side that's inside the jar, that holds a
Speaker 1: what they called a platinum sponge. It was a porous
Speaker 1: piece of platinum and it's position in such a way
Speaker 1: to be directly across from the valve where the hydrogen
Speaker 1: can come out. All right, So when you open up
Speaker 1: the valve, hydrogen shoots out from the air pressure and
Speaker 1: it goes across and hits this platinum sponge. When platinum
Speaker 1: is in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen, it creates
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction that's exothermic, which means it gives off heat.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable that I'm sure you would.
Speaker 1: Does the phrase oh the humanity mean anything to you.
Speaker 1: That's what everyone screamed when I when it was really
Speaker 1: dark that one night tonight, And yeah, okay, well then
Speaker 1: you're totally on board. So this means that the hydrogen
Speaker 1: gas catches fire and you've got a lighter because the
Speaker 1: hydrogen from the cylinder has come out it's hit that
Speaker 1: platinum sponge. The platinum sponge has that exothermic catalyzes, an
Speaker 1: exothermic reaction that then ignites the hydrogen gas that's still
Speaker 1: coming out through the valve. As long as the valve
Speaker 1: is open, this is still going. But hydrogen flames are
Speaker 1: essentially invisible. You can't really see them. However, if you
Speaker 1: were to put anything within that that section where the
Speaker 1: valve is open, it would catch fire. So if you
Speaker 1: put a match in there, it would make the match
Speaker 1: catch on fire because even though it's invisible, it's flaming.
Speaker 1: It actually is happening. It's it's burning at that moment,
Speaker 1: so you can use it to light you know, matches
Speaker 1: or candles or whatever. All right, And then when you
Speaker 1: would close the valve, the flame would go out because
Speaker 1: there's no more fuel coming out. And as long as
Speaker 1: the zinc is still in contact with the sulfuric acid,
Speaker 1: it will continue to generate more hydrogen gas. And eventually
Speaker 1: one of two things will happen. It'll either generate enough
Speaker 1: hydrogen gas so that the gas has pushed the sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid down to a level where it's no longer in
Speaker 1: contact with the zinc, because you know, you've built up
Speaker 1: the air pressure. It's pushed it's like blowing into a straw.
Speaker 1: It's pushed down. The liquid um or the zinc will
Speaker 1: get consumed by the sulfuric acid and it will stop
Speaker 1: because there's nothing for the sulfuric acid to dissolve anymore,
Speaker 1: so you won't you won't be generating anymore hydrogen, you'll
Speaker 1: have to replace the zinc um. Those are the two outcomes.
Speaker 1: So it was really cool because this liner worked purely
Speaker 1: on chemistry. There was no striking, there was no sparks,
Speaker 1: there was nothing that had to ignite a fuel. It
Speaker 1: was purely by generating this hydrogen gas, shooting it at platinum,
Speaker 1: having that create the chemical reaction and then boom, you've
Speaker 1: got a flame as long as that valve is open.
Speaker 1: It was ingenious. It was also incredibly dangerous because it
Speaker 1: was a vat of sulfuric acid um. So it was
Speaker 1: not something that would become widely adopted or universally adopted.
Speaker 1: But it is a phenomenal invention and there are um
Speaker 1: forgive me Alimona, there are videos on YouTube that show
Speaker 1: these things working. Yeah, you just sit there and think
Speaker 1: about fiery stuff. But there are videos on YouTube if
Speaker 1: you want to look this up. They are really fascinating
Speaker 1: and you can even see them in action and understand
Speaker 1: better the mechanisms I'm talking about that make this lighter possible. Again,
Speaker 1: that's a Dobba Reiner lamp, so you should check those
Speaker 1: out because they are really cool. So it does not
Speaker 1: surprise me in the slightest. Well, um Alimona, uh design,
Speaker 1: thank you. You have been the most unique guest I've
Speaker 1: ever had on tech Stuff and I once had strong
Speaker 1: bad in here. Oh he sounds fun. Yeah, he gave
Speaker 1: me a sign off even it was pretty amazing. Uh So,
Speaker 1: speaking of sign offs, guys, this wraps up this episode.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, I'll talk more about lighters and
Speaker 1: how they work and how they've evolved over time. Uh
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll pick up from the chemical double rhiner
Speaker 1: lamp and move up two more modern ones and talk
Speaker 1: about things like how the companies came to be like Zippo.
Speaker 1: It's a name that I'm sure you find very Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: then we're gonna wrap this up. Guys. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend you let me know by getting in touch on
Speaker 1: social media. I am on Facebook and Twitter with the
Speaker 1: handle text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. No, look, it's the Quista find bank.
Speaker 1: Hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows, guys. One thing I want
Speaker 1: to mention before we go, I want to thank my
Speaker 1: good friend Shay for joining the show as Alamona. Shay
Speaker 1: also has an amazing YouTube series, Books and Blue Stockings.
Speaker 1: She's plays Betty Bookworm on that series, so I highly
Speaker 1: recommend you go to YouTube and search that. She does
Speaker 1: very inventive videos talking about different books and different literary
Speaker 1: tropes and UH and themes, and you should definitely check
Speaker 1: that out. There's also a series that she and I
Speaker 1: do called Age of Cinema where we show each other
Speaker 1: movies uh sometimes against the other person's will. Often against
Speaker 1: the other person's will. So if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more and see more from Shay, definitely go check that out.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend it. And sometimes Alamona pops up