Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm johns and strictly and I'm Lauren fo Obama and
Speaker 1: we have a hot item to talk to you about today.
Speaker 1: This this is just indicative of how this entire podcast
Speaker 1: it's gonna go, isn't it. It's gonna be a smoke
Speaker 1: in episode, a spurture. Yeah, we're talking about flyer, you know,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. We wanted to look into camping
Speaker 1: gear and we did, and as we were doing it,
Speaker 1: we saw all these cool things about different fire starting
Speaker 1: technology and and we thought, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: kind of cool to talk about this. But the more
Speaker 1: we saw, the more we thought, well, this is just
Speaker 1: going to completely dominate this episode. This could in fact
Speaker 1: be a whole episode. And then wait a minute, we
Speaker 1: have the full power to make it an entire episode.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do. So first of all,
Speaker 1: we should mention that fire obviously one of the most
Speaker 1: important discoveries that that early humans made. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: critical technology to human existence. Yeah, you could argue that
Speaker 1: because it's technically part of a chemical reaction, maybe you
Speaker 1: don't call it a technology, but it plays an integral
Speaker 1: role in so much of our tech, uh and and
Speaker 1: certainly the technology that we used to create it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's technology, it's technological. So we're going to
Speaker 1: cover everything from low tech ways of making fire to
Speaker 1: some pretty uh pretty high tech and uh terrifying obviously
Speaker 1: ways to make fire. So we've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: human history, not we personally humans, as a general rule,
Speaker 1: it's spent a lot of history learning of different ways
Speaker 1: to make fire, to control fire, to extinguish fire. We've
Speaker 1: had full episodes on firefighting technologies in the past. But
Speaker 1: what is fire? So this is part of that chemical
Speaker 1: reaction I was talking about. It's essentially a chemical reaction
Speaker 1: between oxygen and some sort of fuel source has reached
Speaker 1: it's ignition temperature a k a. The temperature at which
Speaker 1: it will burn. Right, So when a substance, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, has reached that temperature, if it is in
Speaker 1: the presence of oxygen, it will burn and thus we
Speaker 1: get fire. Now, flames from a fire keep the fuel
Speaker 1: at its ignition temperature. That means the reaction becomes self
Speaker 1: sustaining as long as you have fuel, which is you know,
Speaker 1: that that that's the dangerous thing about fire, right, This
Speaker 1: is a chemical reaction that's just going to continue until
Speaker 1: all the fuel is gone, or you have otherwise found
Speaker 1: a way to extinguish it, perhaps by removing the oxygen
Speaker 1: from the environment or dampening it with something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: which lowers the temperature as well. Yeah. So this this
Speaker 1: is the obviously the very dangerous part about fires. That
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that you have a controlled
Speaker 1: environment where you can control exactly how much fuel is
Speaker 1: being added to the fire to make sure you don't
Speaker 1: have a nasty situation pop up. Though. You mentioned ignition temperature,
Speaker 1: and technically any given fuel has two a friend technician temperature,
Speaker 1: that's true, there's the piloted ignition temperature. That's how hot
Speaker 1: a fuel needs to be before it will catch fire
Speaker 1: in the presence of a spark, so it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be as hot as if if you don't have
Speaker 1: any sparks there. For an object to burst into flame
Speaker 1: in the presence of oxygen, it's temperature has to be
Speaker 1: much higher. That's the unpiloted ignition temperature. Right, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the spontaneous combustion s Yeah, exactly, except that means
Speaker 1: a different thing, but but similar similar, right. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you were to heat up a piece of wood
Speaker 1: to a certain temperature and then hit it with a spark,
Speaker 1: it'll start to catch fire. You would have to heat
Speaker 1: it to a much higher temperature for it to just
Speaker 1: start burning it to itself. Yeah, So that that's one
Speaker 1: thing we should point out now. Granted we're gonna mostly
Speaker 1: be talking about piloted ignition temperatures because we're talking about
Speaker 1: helping things along by adding a little spark to it.
Speaker 1: And also something to remember, the fuel that has a
Speaker 1: large surface area to volume ratio burns more readily, meaning
Speaker 1: that you've got a lot of surface area and you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of volume, you can heat up
Speaker 1: and get to that ignition temperature much faster than if
Speaker 1: you had a lot of bulk to you because that
Speaker 1: temperature could then be conducted away from the point of heat,
Speaker 1: and it takes longer for you to actually get that
Speaker 1: to catch fire. Also, as a fuel source itself, it's
Speaker 1: going to have more exposure to oxygen, yes, exactly. So
Speaker 1: you know, one of the many reasons why you want
Speaker 1: to use little bits of tinder before throwing logs onto
Speaker 1: a fire. I mean, it's the tinder is going to
Speaker 1: catch fire more easily and then you can start to
Speaker 1: build up from there. So going very very basic one
Speaker 1: is the most basic way early humans, uh interacted with fire,
Speaker 1: finding some fire and then using it for stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: So this isn't so much making it. This is what
Speaker 1: is that big hot orange thing over there? Let's go
Speaker 1: check it out. I bet we can do something with that.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is that there's evidence that preda
Speaker 1: humans were deliberately controlling this natural found fire to do
Speaker 1: work for them as long as one point five million
Speaker 1: years ago. Right, So once you figure out, oh this
Speaker 1: fire eats stuff, if we keep produces heat, yeah, if
Speaker 1: we keep feeding it, it will stay around. If we
Speaker 1: stop feeding it, then it could go out and we
Speaker 1: can kind of bring it over here if we want to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to be real careful about that. But yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this is this is all before we had found ways
Speaker 1: to necessarily make it ourselves. It was just taking advantage
Speaker 1: of something that was found, you know. And of course
Speaker 1: fires happened in nature for multiple reasons. But if we
Speaker 1: wanted to make it ourselves. In fact, this is something
Speaker 1: that we can still do This is what early humans did,
Speaker 1: and if you're really determined and you are patient, you
Speaker 1: can do it too. People still do it today. You
Speaker 1: can make fire through friction. So first we gotta talk
Speaker 1: about friction. Friction is the resistance to the relative motion
Speaker 1: of two solid objects that are in contact with one another.
Speaker 1: So in other words, like if uh, we have a
Speaker 1: table here in front of us, I have my hand
Speaker 1: on the table. If I want to slide my hand
Speaker 1: across the table, first I have to put enough force
Speaker 1: to overcome this resistance to the motion, this friction, and
Speaker 1: even then I'm going to feel the friction as my
Speaker 1: hand moves across the table. That Now, the actual amount
Speaker 1: of friction is usually proportional to the force pressing the
Speaker 1: surfaces of the two objects together. So if I'm pressing
Speaker 1: down really hard on the table and then try to
Speaker 1: move my hand, I'm going to encounter more friction than
Speaker 1: if I just very lightly had my hand on the table. Obviously,
Speaker 1: friction can be things that are you know, an object
Speaker 1: that's just on a flat surface that's not moving at all,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's an inclined surface, and the the the
Speaker 1: normal force, the force that's pressing the surfaces together would
Speaker 1: just be gravity in that case. But you can also
Speaker 1: have two different objects that are experiencing friction against each
Speaker 1: other that aren't. You know, gravity is not the main
Speaker 1: force at play. That's also totally possible. Um. So the
Speaker 1: roughness of the surfaces also affects the amount of resistance
Speaker 1: that they have to moving against each other. That makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: If you're using a rough sand paper against some wood,
Speaker 1: then it ends up feeling. You can feel that resistance
Speaker 1: and you can feel the heat certainly using that a
Speaker 1: little bit. If you use a really finely grained piece
Speaker 1: of sand paper, the resistance isn't as much. You're you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to move that paper a little
Speaker 1: more easily. Interestingly enough, this only is true to a point, right.
Speaker 1: This this is relatively simplified, because if you, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, okay, if you take two perfectly smooth sheets
Speaker 1: of metal, yes like flawlessly smooth, and you put them
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, right, and you try to rub them
Speaker 1: against each other. They had here, they had here, it's
Speaker 1: called cold welding. They actually, on a molecular level, adhere
Speaker 1: to one another. So at this point you would think normally,
Speaker 1: if you if you're talking about perfectly smooth surfaces, you
Speaker 1: would think friction lists. You would think, oh, well, those
Speaker 1: things are just going to slide right off each other,
Speaker 1: but actually the opposite is true. They will cold weld
Speaker 1: together on a molecular level. So we just keep that
Speaker 1: in mind that when we're talking about friction, we are
Speaker 1: simplifying things. We're using a very kind of macro look
Speaker 1: at it. There's also the coefficient of friction. That's essentially
Speaker 1: the amount of resistance that you have, that ratio of
Speaker 1: the frictional resistance force to that normal force pressing together
Speaker 1: the two services. So you're moving one object against another object,
Speaker 1: and some of that energy you put into moving the
Speaker 1: object goes to overcoming that friction, and that energy is
Speaker 1: not lost because you don't lose energy. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: create or destroy it, you just converted. It's converted into heat. Yes,
Speaker 1: So whatever heat, whatever energy would have been used overcoming
Speaker 1: that friction gets converted into heat. So when you rub
Speaker 1: two sticks together, those contacting surfaces start to heat up,
Speaker 1: and if you rub them together fast enough and for
Speaker 1: long enough, the dust or charred that's given off by
Speaker 1: those sticks will grow hot enough to glow and that
Speaker 1: becomes your coal. So the coal in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not coal like you would dig out of the ground.
Speaker 1: We're talking about an ember, something that is so hot
Speaker 1: that it may be glowing, giving off light as well
Speaker 1: as heat. And then you would introduce that coal to
Speaker 1: tender too in order to to get a flame going.
Speaker 1: And you can do this with sticks, although more frequently
Speaker 1: you'll have something like a board and a stick and
Speaker 1: you'll do a like a hand drill, so that you
Speaker 1: drill a stick against the board and you start boring
Speaker 1: a hole and as a as a result, the dust
Speaker 1: that's around the hole will get hot, and if it
Speaker 1: gets hot enough, it becomes a coal. Or you might
Speaker 1: have a piece of hardwood that's like a rod and
Speaker 1: some soft wood that has a little trough dug in it,
Speaker 1: and you just rub the end of the rod through
Speaker 1: the trough rapidly, and that also will generate this very
Speaker 1: hot char that eventually we'll get hot enough for it
Speaker 1: to become a coal and then you can light a fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's really easy. This is not something
Speaker 1: that's necessarily easy. It actually takes quite a bit of practice. Usually,
Speaker 1: I mean people who try it for the first time
Speaker 1: are rarely successful unless they have the careful guidance of
Speaker 1: an expert who has done it before, because you know
Speaker 1: it's it's It can be exhausting. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: of patients and a lot of strength and endurance, um,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't have the technique down, if you
Speaker 1: haven't built up calluses on your hands. It can also
Speaker 1: be painful. But it is certainly a possible thing to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, people do it all the time. You've probably
Speaker 1: have seen television shows, whether they are fictional or documentaries,
Speaker 1: where people have done this kind of method, and YouTube
Speaker 1: is just full of instructional videos if you want to
Speaker 1: learn how to do this, and you may be saying
Speaker 1: to yourself that, hey, this isn't really a technology, um,
Speaker 1: but there are a few a few tricks or or
Speaker 1: hacks or whatever you want to call it that you
Speaker 1: can use that will move it a little bit closer
Speaker 1: into the realm of technology, like adding a little bit
Speaker 1: of grit to the surface of the sticks to increase
Speaker 1: the action between them, or creating a simple pulley system
Speaker 1: using a sturdy strap to help you to to help
Speaker 1: make the movement easier. So I mean, like like the
Speaker 1: bow method where you have the the bow where the
Speaker 1: string is wrapped around one of the sticks, and you
Speaker 1: use that to make the spin it, Yeah, to spin
Speaker 1: it really really fast. So yeah, this is these are
Speaker 1: basic tools, but basic tools are the foundation of technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we're not sure, I mean not just us, but
Speaker 1: humanity in general is not sure how long we have
Speaker 1: been using this particular form of fire starting. I've been
Speaker 1: doing it longer than we've been writing. Yes, and you know,
Speaker 1: at a certain point, sticks really don't hold up that
Speaker 1: well to the tests of time. Yeah. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where you can't really necessarily go
Speaker 1: back and uh find find lots of evidence for exactly
Speaker 1: how you might be able to find evidence of a fire,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily know how they got it started right,
Speaker 1: you know, was this something that they used, the whole
Speaker 1: rubbing sticks together thing, or was this they found fire
Speaker 1: and brought it back? I think I think the oldest
Speaker 1: stick that I've seen mentioned in a museum website where
Speaker 1: some four thousand years old. But that seems awfully young
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing, considering that, you know, we've
Speaker 1: been using fire in some form or another for more
Speaker 1: than a million years. Uh, so then moving on to
Speaker 1: flint and steel or other metals or technically other minerals
Speaker 1: as well. Uh, you've probably have heard of flint and steel,
Speaker 1: particularly if you play mind graft, because it's one of
Speaker 1: the things you can make. So flint is a hard
Speaker 1: sedimentary rock and it has a type of micro crystalline
Speaker 1: quartz structure to it. Uh. Geologists call it shirt, which
Speaker 1: is just a great word. I call it. I call
Speaker 1: it bob. Uh. No. It's been used in toolmaking for
Speaker 1: a while, some some two million years. So it can
Speaker 1: break into very sharp pieces that structure, that crystalline structure,
Speaker 1: so it makes really good knives or spear or arrow heads. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's been used in lots of different types of tools.
Speaker 1: And when you strike it against steel, you end up
Speaker 1: getting the spark that's really good for a fire. And
Speaker 1: actually my notes, I wrote flint gives off a spark
Speaker 1: suitable for starting a fire, but that's not really true.
Speaker 1: It's actually the steel that's giving off the spark. So
Speaker 1: here's the interesting thing. Now, this is going to be
Speaker 1: different when we talk about modern day lighters that use
Speaker 1: a very similar approach. But the idea is that you
Speaker 1: are creating the friction generated by this strike. You're trying
Speaker 1: to strike it from an angle. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: like direct on, like slam iron against a piece of flint.
Speaker 1: You're you're you're doing this kind of angular motion. And
Speaker 1: the point is that you're trying to create friction generated
Speaker 1: by the strike to knockoff little pieces of steel or iron.
Speaker 1: I mean, steel really is is refined iron um and
Speaker 1: and that works because the flint is harder than the steel. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you you will actually have the flint knock little
Speaker 1: pieces of steel off. Now, those pieces are heated above
Speaker 1: the ignission temperature for iron based on those tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: um particles, they're gett knocked off again, we're talking about
Speaker 1: that surface area to volume. The ignition temperature of iron
Speaker 1: is actually very low. Yeah, well comparatively when you get
Speaker 1: it into the tiny little pieces. Certainly if you're looking
Speaker 1: at it in bulk, very high. But but but you
Speaker 1: might be asking, well, what else is going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: the presence of oxygen is what's allowing those pieces to
Speaker 1: heat up even more. Because iron has something called pyrophoricity,
Speaker 1: and you might say it was pyrophoricity. It means that
Speaker 1: it will ignite in the presence of oxygen. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you might say, wait a minute, I have a wrought
Speaker 1: iron fence and I can't even remember a single day
Speaker 1: when it was on fire. Super not on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably the least on fire thing that's in my
Speaker 1: house or around my house. It's because that has a
Speaker 1: coat of iron oxide on it. So iron oxide also
Speaker 1: we call that rust. But iron goes through this oxidation
Speaker 1: process when you have it in bulk. The heat generated
Speaker 1: from that oxidation process means that the it can be
Speaker 1: conducted through the rest of the material, and that's why
Speaker 1: it doesn't heat up to a point where it gets burns,
Speaker 1: burst into flames. But if it's a really really small
Speaker 1: piece that is suddenly exposed to oxygen, then there's nowhere
Speaker 1: for that heat to go. It just ends up becoming
Speaker 1: this oxidized super hot mass, super hot for its size anyway,
Speaker 1: uh and can be very Uh can since become molten,
Speaker 1: which then you can use to set fire something yet
Speaker 1: tender tender usually usually UM. Humans have been using this
Speaker 1: method for some four to ten thousand years, which means,
Speaker 1: of course that that the earliest flint based fire starters.
Speaker 1: We're not using steel at all, which was invented in
Speaker 1: the bronze and or iron age some uh, you know,
Speaker 1: less than four thousand years ago, right, so earlier stuff
Speaker 1: was using something else, right, iron pyrate, a fool's gold.
Speaker 1: Instruments of those types have been found dating back way farther,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to say that. Part of this
Speaker 1: technology is really also a tender materials technology issue, because
Speaker 1: as we have improved ways of creating tinder and carrying
Speaker 1: it and keeping it dry, we have been able to
Speaker 1: more effectively use flint and steel to create fire. Around
Speaker 1: the world, tinder has been made from everything from like
Speaker 1: simple bits of dried grass or bark to decaying tree fungus,
Speaker 1: which is apparently really effective at starting fires. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I've never tried it. Um, and it's been carried in
Speaker 1: everything from really ornate brass or enameled boxes to go
Speaker 1: testicle leather. Okay, I I have no response to that.
Speaker 1: We're learning things. I do remember watching I think it
Speaker 1: was UM Survivor where the guy would end up getting
Speaker 1: a spark from flint and steel essentially and then lighting
Speaker 1: some tinder and then carrying a handful of smoking tinder
Speaker 1: to where he was going to light his fire, and
Speaker 1: the whole time I was thinking, please don't, please, don't
Speaker 1: burn yourself, Mr nice Canadian man. And then of course
Speaker 1: he would make a fire um like a fire bundle,
Speaker 1: which would have a tin smoking ember inside of it,
Speaker 1: and that would allow him to carry his fire with
Speaker 1: him to his next site, where he would then use
Speaker 1: that ember to help light the fire, unless he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to create a new spark. Uh. Not all tinder
Speaker 1: is carried already on fire. Some of it is just carried,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty frequently, just just kept very dry and safe.
Speaker 1: Right at any rate, speaking of tinder, though, Hey, there
Speaker 1: was a thing called the tinder pistol, so it was
Speaker 1: softer than regular pistols. It's a tinder pistol. No, No,
Speaker 1: this was in It was sort of a step between
Speaker 1: the flint and steel kits and lighters that we have today, okay,
Speaker 1: And they were converted flintlock pistols. They consist of the
Speaker 1: handle and trigger of a pistol with a small tinder
Speaker 1: box where the barrel of the pistol would be pulling.
Speaker 1: The trigger would pull back the lid on the tinder
Speaker 1: box and simultaneously engage the flintlock mechanism which would send
Speaker 1: sparks into the tinder. And now we we've talked a
Speaker 1: little bit on the show before about flintlock guns. It
Speaker 1: was in our three D Printed Guns episode. Yep. We
Speaker 1: also have an episode from way way back about the
Speaker 1: technology of fifteen ten where Chris, Chris Pallette and I
Speaker 1: talked a lot about flintlock pistols and that one. So
Speaker 1: if you really want a full run down on the flintlock,
Speaker 1: you can listen to that old episode of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: but a quick refresher just because there's such elegant machines. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the flintlock pistols hammer is actually a lever that holds
Speaker 1: a bit of flint at one end and is attached
Speaker 1: to a spring at the other end, and that spring
Speaker 1: connects to the guns trigger, all right, So when you
Speaker 1: pull the trigger, it springs that the flint edge of
Speaker 1: the hammer into contact with a bit of steel called
Speaker 1: a frizzen, which creates sparks which light the material at hand.
Speaker 1: In a pistol it would be gunpowder and in ours
Speaker 1: it is tinder. So you you reload the spring by
Speaker 1: simply pulling back the hammer. Again interesting, not not difficult, um,
Speaker 1: but these these tinder pistols, though were household items. They
Speaker 1: really weren't meant to be portable, and all the models
Speaker 1: that I've seen included these really heavy legs so that
Speaker 1: they could sit kind of elegantly on a table. Uh.
Speaker 1: Flintlock pistols were really new and expensive in the early
Speaker 1: to mid six hundreds, so it was definitely a measure
Speaker 1: of wealth to own such a contraption just for lighting
Speaker 1: candles and your tobacco products and etcetera. You know, one
Speaker 1: thing that I wanted to talk about because I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, it's again a very simple technology that a
Speaker 1: lot of us take for granted, especially since it's not
Speaker 1: that frequent that most of us come into contact with
Speaker 1: us anymore. But just I want to talk about matches,
Speaker 1: and the reason is because it's a cool use of
Speaker 1: our knowledge of friction and chemistry to be able to
Speaker 1: create fire in a manageable way, and it really made
Speaker 1: it much much easier to produce fire. Now. They're relatively
Speaker 1: recent inventions, although the earliest UH research dates all the
Speaker 1: way back to the late seventeenth century sight, and that's
Speaker 1: when a philosopher, physicist, chemist, professional smart person named Robert
Speaker 1: Boyle began to experiment with phosphorus, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: volatile material, and he coded a coarse piece of paper
Speaker 1: with phosphorus and then found that by moving a piece
Speaker 1: of wood coated and sulfur against that phosphorus coated paper,
Speaker 1: he could produce fire. You just had to move fast
Speaker 1: enough for the friction to generate the heat necessary to
Speaker 1: get above that ignition temperature. But his ingredients were also
Speaker 1: kind of toxic, so it wasn't really practical to make that.
Speaker 1: As like, this is the new fire starting technology of
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, So you get to a century later,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty French physicists invent the phosphoric candle. Now this
Speaker 1: is super interesting to me because I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: it must have looked like to light something using this thing.
Speaker 1: It sounds very traumatic. Yeah, So imagine that you've got
Speaker 1: a piece of paper or some strings coated in wax
Speaker 1: and it's been tipped with phosphorus and sealed in a
Speaker 1: glass container. So you've got this glass container inside of
Speaker 1: which is this string or glass or a paper, And
Speaker 1: then if you wanted to light the match, you would
Speaker 1: have to break the glass because upon being exposed to
Speaker 1: air the phosphorus would ignite and set fire to the
Speaker 1: paper and or strange. Yeah, so in case of a
Speaker 1: need for fire, break glass. It's kind of the opposite
Speaker 1: of what we usually see. Yeah. Yeah, not obviously not practical,
Speaker 1: very interesting, but not practical. Then let's see if I
Speaker 1: can say this word that that, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: didn't exist until this thing was invented in eight oh five.
Speaker 1: You have the oxy muriated match. It's it's also known
Speaker 1: as the instantaneous lightbox, which I think is a much
Speaker 1: nicer name. Uh Now, this was also kind of a
Speaker 1: scary way to start a fire. So you would use
Speaker 1: little pieces of wood that had been treated chemically, uh
Speaker 1: so that when exposed to sulfuric acid, which serious stuff there,
Speaker 1: but when exposed to sulfuric acid, the wood would burst
Speaker 1: into flame. So you dip these bits of wood into
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid and you create fire. This Why don't Why
Speaker 1: don't Why doesn't every child? I think the sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: alone answers that question. But yeah, it was interesting. And
Speaker 1: again this was all leading up to seven when a
Speaker 1: man named John Walker, an Englishman, invented the friction match,
Speaker 1: which were three inch long pieces of wood that were
Speaker 1: tipped with potassium chlorate and to many sulfide gum and starch.
Speaker 1: So drawing this match against any rough surface like sand
Speaker 1: paper would cause these chemicals to mix, and because you
Speaker 1: had added heat from friction and oxygen from the air,
Speaker 1: they would end up bursting into flame they hit that
Speaker 1: ignition temperature and the boom, and you also kind of
Speaker 1: get a lot of sputtering, like this was a you know,
Speaker 1: it was just a little bit like a sparkler almost. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One one description I saw said it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a listening to a bunch of firecrackers go off,
Speaker 1: not as loud, but she get those little bit and
Speaker 1: then uh, later on you would see very similar matches
Speaker 1: coated with sulfur and white phosphorus, which could be struck
Speaker 1: pretty much anywhere, including like on clothing. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever watched movies or television shows where you have that
Speaker 1: person who just you know, uses the match and rubs
Speaker 1: it really quickly against pretty much anything beard or whatever
Speaker 1: that's a table top, essentially, that's these sorts of matches,
Speaker 1: but also has some drawbacks. So remember that way back
Speaker 1: when Boyle was practicing with his he had those toxic
Speaker 1: fumes given off, same sort of thing. The gas given
Speaker 1: off in this ignition process was pretty toxic. So in fact,
Speaker 1: there were people who would market these um these matches,
Speaker 1: and I think they were called lucifers originally, and they
Speaker 1: said don't breathe in the few Yeah, O, white white
Speaker 1: phosphorus is bad times kind of not good. So there's
Speaker 1: the question. We have those matches you can lie against
Speaker 1: practically any service. Why can't we do that with a
Speaker 1: match that you buy today? Like you get a matchbook,
Speaker 1: you take a match out of the matchbook. Why is
Speaker 1: it that if I, even if I try really hard
Speaker 1: to light it against coarse sand paper, nothing happens because
Speaker 1: all of the chemicals needed to create the ignition are
Speaker 1: not on the head of the match. Some of them
Speaker 1: are in the strip of paper that you rub the
Speaker 1: match against. Matchbook clever. So by limiting where I can
Speaker 1: strike the match, I make it safer to use. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you were to introduce enough heat to any match,
Speaker 1: then it was going to ignite, but on its own,
Speaker 1: it's not likely to do so unless you were again
Speaker 1: like exposing it to flame or something like that. So,
Speaker 1: like you say, the match divides up those those chemicals
Speaker 1: onto the striking surface and the match itself. So modern
Speaker 1: matches have chemicals that allow it to ignite evenly so
Speaker 1: you don't get like that that crazy sputtering. And typically
Speaker 1: your match head has some quick burning chemicals like potassium
Speaker 1: chlorine on them. The box or matchbook has a strip
Speaker 1: containing some other chemical, usually something like red phosphorus, which
Speaker 1: does not those toxic fumes. Phosphorus does, yeah, which very
Speaker 1: important obviously. So yeah, when you strike those matches, the
Speaker 1: match to that that surface together, you get that chemical mix,
Speaker 1: you get the heat, you get the oxygen, you get fire.
Speaker 1: So super interesting to me that that's how those those
Speaker 1: um developed. Then you have electric matches, which are not
Speaker 1: at matches there. They're essentially coils of wire and you
Speaker 1: run electricity through that coil of wire, and the resistance
Speaker 1: of that wire means that you lose some with the
Speaker 1: electricity into the form of heat, which often with electronics
Speaker 1: is something that's really irritating. Right Oh yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to avoid that, and for example your laptop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that all of those pathways
Speaker 1: are as efficient as possible. That are it's generating as
Speaker 1: little heat as possible, So that way you're getting the
Speaker 1: most out of your your energy pouring into it. Right.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking to create heat, you can very
Speaker 1: easily create a situation where you're going to make all
Speaker 1: of that resistance happen and build up as much heat
Speaker 1: as possible exactly, and then the wire will start to glow.
Speaker 1: It's giving off photons and it's really really hot and
Speaker 1: you can ignite stuff with it. If you have ever
Speaker 1: used a car cigarette lighter, that's essentially how these work,
Speaker 1: which don't I don't think exists anymore in cars, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have an older car maybe. I remember I
Speaker 1: burned myself quite badly on a car cigarette lighter because
Speaker 1: I remember my my distinctly remember this. My father was
Speaker 1: telling me, like, this is hot. It's really really hot.
Speaker 1: You don't want to touch this because it's hot, and
Speaker 1: as a kid, I thought that's not hot, and I
Speaker 1: touched it. Not my dad's fault, Yeah, I learned my lesson.
Speaker 1: But dad wasn't trying to like, you know, let him
Speaker 1: learn the hard way. He was actually trying to be
Speaker 1: very responsible. I was the irresponsible jerk in that case.
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to make that clear
Speaker 1: that my dad was not abusing me. I think I
Speaker 1: think most humans have a have a hot things are hot.
Speaker 1: Story very much like that somewhere. But this is the
Speaker 1: same principle that electric heating surfaces use, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you have an electric stove that kind of thing, it's
Speaker 1: essentially using resistance so that the flow of electricity generates
Speaker 1: heat until you're able to do something with that, whether
Speaker 1: that's light a fire or cook your meal. So that's
Speaker 1: what electric matches are. And they come in lots of
Speaker 1: different forms, not so much these days, I mean a
Speaker 1: few of them do. Like in our camping episode. I
Speaker 1: didn't mention it because I wanted to talk more about
Speaker 1: fire making and in this episode, but I've seen a
Speaker 1: portable electric match. Essentially it's really meant to start fires,
Speaker 1: even in a camping situation. But it's it's not really
Speaker 1: that different from a cigarette lighter that in the old cars.
Speaker 1: Pretty much the same sort of thing, alright. So now
Speaker 1: we get up to uh, magnesium magnesium fire starters, right,
Speaker 1: sometimes also called fire steel. This is basically a really
Speaker 1: efficient form of a flint and steel mechanism. Um you
Speaker 1: would draw a steel blade against a bit of magnesium
Speaker 1: or a magnesium alloy which would create these super hot sparks.
Speaker 1: Magnesium flames up around a three thousand degrees celsius that's
Speaker 1: about five thousand five degrees fahrenheit, which which makes it
Speaker 1: really useful for emergency situations because first of all, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a very bright spark that it's producing, and
Speaker 1: second of all, it's it's really combustible. It's gonna combust
Speaker 1: what you need combusted. Yeah, no, no joke. All right.
Speaker 1: So now we're getting down to lighters like the butuane
Speaker 1: lighters that uh, you know, most of us are familiar
Speaker 1: with in some form or another. So they have a
Speaker 1: few important parts. One is the spark wheel, which is
Speaker 1: made up of hardened steel wire. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: that east spin with your thumb. Yeah, failed to spend
Speaker 1: with your thumb. In my case, I'm still really incapable
Speaker 1: of using lighters. Yeah, I have very few occasions to
Speaker 1: use lighters, so it's not really something I do. But
Speaker 1: that's the case. I am too, I am too. I
Speaker 1: just happen to have one of the long braun style
Speaker 1: lighters shut. So the wheel grinds against the material that's
Speaker 1: like flint. Some of them even call it flint, but
Speaker 1: most of these lighters have a man made metallic material
Speaker 1: called ferro cirium in place of flint. Now, the flint
Speaker 1: being used in these lighters is different from flint and steel.
Speaker 1: That that kind of method is the flint that you
Speaker 1: would actually find out in rocks, you know, as actual
Speaker 1: rocks in our own Yeah, you would, you would find
Speaker 1: it in the earth. Um. Now, in that case, the
Speaker 1: flint is the thing, like we said earlier, that breaks
Speaker 1: off a little pieces of steel and those heat up
Speaker 1: and that's what you used to light your fire with
Speaker 1: a lighter. It's the other way around. The steel is
Speaker 1: actually harder than this farro cirium material, and as the
Speaker 1: pharaoh cirium that is oxidizing, that's sparking. So the steel
Speaker 1: remains pretty much the way it is. This this so
Speaker 1: called flint gets worn down over time because that's the
Speaker 1: stuff that's actually sparking. Yeah, that's that's similar to that
Speaker 1: process in that magnesium but that I was just talking about.
Speaker 1: Well right, yeah, it's interesting because it's the same basic principle.
Speaker 1: It's just it depends on which material it is it's
Speaker 1: actually sparking. Uh. In this case, we also have a
Speaker 1: compressed spring that provides the pressure needed to hold that
Speaker 1: pharow cirium up against that wheel. You would imagine if
Speaker 1: you're using a lighter, then eventually you're starting to wear
Speaker 1: down that material because you're you're knocking off little pieces
Speaker 1: of it that are that's what's sparking. Ah, So you
Speaker 1: need the spring in order to keep the flint flush
Speaker 1: against the exactly. Yeah, So this this spring very gradually
Speaker 1: extends as the flank gets worn down. Now, granted, it's
Speaker 1: not something that you would notice over you know, unless
Speaker 1: over a long, long, long period of time. In fact,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to run out of fuel with your
Speaker 1: life exactly, and that fuel tends to be buttane. You
Speaker 1: usually have a little canister that's in the base of
Speaker 1: the lighter that contains the fuel. It is controlled by valves,
Speaker 1: and when you press down on that little usually red
Speaker 1: button when you flick the wheel, that's what opens up
Speaker 1: the valve to allow butane to fly through. Now, because
Speaker 1: you have valves, because you have this controlled release of butane,
Speaker 1: and because we learned a fire will sustain itself as
Speaker 1: long as it has fuel, because the flame is hot
Speaker 1: enough to keep it at that ignition temperature once you
Speaker 1: turn that wheel. Once you're good, you just have to
Speaker 1: hold down that little button button and as long as
Speaker 1: you have fuel that that fire should stay lit, assuming
Speaker 1: you don't run into something like really high winds that
Speaker 1: interrupts that flow a fuel to the flame. So obviously
Speaker 1: it was really important to design this in such a
Speaker 1: way where you weren't going to get any blowback with
Speaker 1: the fire backdraft. Yeah, you don't want anything like that.
Speaker 1: So as the film, no, no, I have a soft
Speaker 1: spot in my heart, flat movie. But anyway, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting technology. So we thought, where can we
Speaker 1: go from here? And we thought about talking about blow torches,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot to talk about with blow torches.
Speaker 1: And there was a choice between blow torches or are
Speaker 1: incredibly scary fire producing technology, and we decided to go
Speaker 1: as scary. We decided that flamethrowers are really the way
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, so, uh, strap yourselves in, guys. We
Speaker 1: we couldn't resist. First of all, weaponizing fire not a
Speaker 1: new idea. I mean, you know, anyone who seen the
Speaker 1: documentary Robin Hood knows Prince of Thieves, you know that
Speaker 1: one with Kevin Costner Um that one. Obviously they would
Speaker 1: use flaming arrows, but we've been using actual kind of
Speaker 1: early flamethrower ideas for very long time, like way back
Speaker 1: in fifth century b C. These were essentially tubes like
Speaker 1: brass tubes filled with a burning stuff, and a warrior
Speaker 1: would blow on one end of the tube, which would
Speaker 1: launch the burning stuff out of the other end of
Speaker 1: the tube, presumably at an enemy, hopefully fingers crossed. Now,
Speaker 1: when you get up to the seventh century C, that's
Speaker 1: when the Byzantine Empire began to use Greek fire. This
Speaker 1: is terrifying stuff to read about. And we don't actually
Speaker 1: know what it was made of. No, we have some
Speaker 1: suspicions that was probably some sort of petroleum mix that
Speaker 1: had some other chemicals in it, but we don't know
Speaker 1: specifically the people who made this stuff. We're very very
Speaker 1: secretive in it because obviously it was a it was
Speaker 1: a trade secret. It was an advantage over all their enemies, right.
Speaker 1: It is terrifying think of it. Think of being on
Speaker 1: a ship in the seventh century and seeing streams of
Speaker 1: flame going into the sky from the walls of city
Speaker 1: that you're trying to to lay siege to. You might
Speaker 1: have some second thoughts, especially if you're in a wooden chip,
Speaker 1: which you were at the time, that would definitely get like, guys,
Speaker 1: I foresee a problem. I am perhaps rethinking this idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the way this would work again is they would
Speaker 1: have these brass tubes that would be connected to some
Speaker 1: sort of reservoir. Usually you would also have a pump
Speaker 1: that would pump the liquid through the tube. It was
Speaker 1: a single action pump, meaning it was only working on
Speaker 1: the downstroke, and then you would have some lucky person
Speaker 1: whose job it was to ignite the fuel when it
Speaker 1: came out of the tube. There are some people who
Speaker 1: actually suggested that it's possible the Greek fire would even
Speaker 1: ignite upon connecting with water, which is interesting. It's not
Speaker 1: impossible that that is the case. But there's the problem
Speaker 1: is there's no definitive account that tells us exactly how
Speaker 1: this worked. But it seems that there were more likely
Speaker 1: these warriors who would essentially hold a torch light the
Speaker 1: end of this thing. Bad job. Yeah, not necessarily. You
Speaker 1: probably drew the short straw that day and it would
Speaker 1: pump out this these flames and once the pump had
Speaker 1: finished on its downstroke and goes back up again, the
Speaker 1: flames would stop because your fuel was cut off, and
Speaker 1: so the warrior would have to stay there in order
Speaker 1: to ignite the next stream. Chinese warriors copied this approach
Speaker 1: and improved upon it by using double bellows, which could
Speaker 1: pump out flammable liquid both on the upstroke and the
Speaker 1: downstroke of the bellows itself, because it had this this
Speaker 1: double action going on, so you had a continuous stream
Speaker 1: of flames coming at you. Definitely gonna make you think
Speaker 1: twice before you try and storm their their ranks. Now,
Speaker 1: these items, these weapons, we're really scary. They're absolutely devastating,
Speaker 1: but they were not portable because they were usually connected
Speaker 1: to some sort of reservoir. So's we're not talking about
Speaker 1: like a personal weapon. This is something that's attached to
Speaker 1: a larger structure of some sort. And eventually some thing
Speaker 1: else came along that was way more effective as a
Speaker 1: as a tool of war that essentially replaced flames for
Speaker 1: a good long time, and that would be gunpowder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gunpowder certainly changed warfare dramatically. Everything from the era of
Speaker 1: the knights and armor two castles to this kind of
Speaker 1: flame technology, all of that was sort of rendered moot
Speaker 1: once gunpowder came along. Although flame throwers did in fact
Speaker 1: come back into warfare, it would take it until about
Speaker 1: World War One the German Army began to introduce uh
Speaker 1: flamethrowers into warfare. It wouldn't be till World World War
Speaker 1: two that you'd see both access and Allied powers using
Speaker 1: this technology. And it was pretty terrifying stuff because we
Speaker 1: we had the technology to make them portable. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: now it became a personal weapon, not just something that
Speaker 1: was connecting. Yeah. Absolutely. So not all developed developments and
Speaker 1: technology are things that we are necessarily like, hooray, yes, awesome.
Speaker 1: Some of them are like, wow, that is scary stuff.
Speaker 1: It's terrifying. It also looks really cool in video games.
Speaker 1: I guess at a certain point I can't really argue
Speaker 1: movies like The Running Man, you know, Fireball, fictional flamethrowers
Speaker 1: are terrible. John always a little bit upset you guys
Speaker 1: doing this research. Well, no, because I was reading about
Speaker 1: what would happen. I mean, you're you're talking about burning
Speaker 1: fuel flying at people. So but to just focus on
Speaker 1: the technology and not the application of it, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. So these flamethrowers were different. They were portable.
Speaker 1: A single soldier could carry and operate one. And what
Speaker 1: it would consist of is a backpack that would essentially
Speaker 1: have three tanks on it. You have to fuel canisters
Speaker 1: and in between them you would have a pressurized air canister.
Speaker 1: So the fuel canisters, that's what has whatever the flammable
Speaker 1: liquid happens to be for your flamethrower. The pressurized air
Speaker 1: is what forces that fuel to go through the fuel
Speaker 1: lines and through the gun that you're holding. Now, that
Speaker 1: fuel flows through to the gun, and that's where you've
Speaker 1: got to triggers. Essentially, one trigger is what allows the
Speaker 1: fuel to flow through and the other one is the
Speaker 1: igniter uh. And they had different ignititers depending upon the
Speaker 1: era of flamethrower. Like the early ones used resistance coil,
Speaker 1: very similar to the electric matches we were talking about.
Speaker 1: So you just have this really hot coil of wire.
Speaker 1: The fuel would pass through it essentially or or against it,
Speaker 1: and that would hit its ignition temperature. The flame would
Speaker 1: start and of course once the flame started it was
Speaker 1: enough to keep that flame going, you could let go
Speaker 1: of the ignitior at that point, just hold onto the fuel.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing with the more modern ones, except
Speaker 1: they use spark plugs. So you've got a battery and
Speaker 1: the battery provides electricity to the spark plug, which generates
Speaker 1: a spark. That's what allows the fuel to catch fire.
Speaker 1: And again, as long as you've got fuel going through
Speaker 1: the flamethrower, you're going to be shooting flames out. So
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. But you know, let's not stop there. You
Speaker 1: know that that's terrifying all its on its own. You
Speaker 1: see a soldier shooting flame out, that's very intimidating. But
Speaker 1: you can also make very large mobile flamethrowers. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can attach it to something like, I don't know, a tank. Now.
Speaker 1: The reason why it gets even more terrifying with the
Speaker 1: tank is that not only do you have this enormous
Speaker 1: armored vehicle bearing down at you, the pump in this
Speaker 1: vehicle is attached directly to its motor, so it's so
Speaker 1: so the tank's engine, oh my goodness, is powering the
Speaker 1: flow of the fluid. Yes, so you can shoot it
Speaker 1: way further than you could with a handheld flamethrower, so
Speaker 1: you get the propulsion of fuel would go much further.
Speaker 1: And obviously, again a very effective intimidation tool, not to
Speaker 1: mention just an outright devastating weapon. So yeah, those are
Speaker 1: those are the methods that we wanted to cover about
Speaker 1: technology that makes flames. Obviously we didn't cover other things
Speaker 1: like you can use light to make you can use lasers,
Speaker 1: you could use uh you can use lenses that focus
Speaker 1: light to a point. So there are other uh option
Speaker 1: is that we didn't cover. Maybe one day we'll do
Speaker 1: a second episode. If if any of you guys out
Speaker 1: there are kind of pyros and you would like to
Speaker 1: hear more than definitely let us know, particularly if there
Speaker 1: is some method that you thought, you know, I was
Speaker 1: hoping you were going to cover it and we didn't.
Speaker 1: Let us know, tell us what we missed, and we will.
Speaker 1: We will consider doing a second episode. And uh, I
Speaker 1: feel that we are justified in doing this episode only
Speaker 1: because we have done episodes about how fire engines work.
Speaker 1: We've done episodes on how the Boston fired alarm system worked.
Speaker 1: You know, we have all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So this is responsible We're getting response responsible journalists. We
Speaker 1: have to tell both sides of the story. Clearly, if
Speaker 1: I learned nothing from browsing through a journalism schools brochure
Speaker 1: I learned that. So, guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech stuff right into us. Let
Speaker 1: us know our email addresses tech stuff at how stuff
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