Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland of an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: a lot of all things tech. And because we are
Speaker 1: taking today off as a holiday, I thought that I
Speaker 1: would rerun an episode to give myself and more importantly,
Speaker 1: my super producer TORII a little bit of a holiday break.
Speaker 1: So what you are about to hear is an episode
Speaker 1: that we actually published February of last year. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is an episode called Firestarter. It's about the development of
Speaker 1: matches primarily, and um, I thought it was appropriate because
Speaker 1: we just had the fourth of July weekend, so that
Speaker 1: typically involves lots of stuff like fireworks and grilling and
Speaker 1: things like that, stuff where matches might come in handy.
Speaker 1: So here's an episode about the development of matches. And
Speaker 1: also I gotta I gotta warn you. Uh. This episode
Speaker 1: has a special guest, um Alimona, who is a matchmaker
Speaker 1: at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, who also helps with the episode.
Speaker 1: It is a little silly and if you if you
Speaker 1: cringe easily at silly humor, just quick warning up front,
Speaker 1: that's gonna happen in this episode, but you will learn
Speaker 1: about the evolution of matches, which is pretty fascinating stuff
Speaker 1: filled with lots of dangerous chemistry. So I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy and I hope you had a happy and safe
Speaker 1: Fourth of July weekend. Today we're going to talk about fire.
Speaker 1: It's somebody safe fire, no god, no. Um, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: I've been blessed with a special guest today. Would you
Speaker 1: please introduce herself to all these nice people. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: almona middler, and I'm a matchmaker that I didn't quite
Speaker 1: understand what matchmaking entailed, so I'm quite good at starting fires. Yes,
Speaker 1: so um, for those who do not know, I have
Speaker 1: a sordid history with the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and it
Speaker 1: was there, I believe where my path first crossed with
Speaker 1: that of alamonas uh the village matchmaker. And um, I
Speaker 1: guess it's only fitting that for this episode I have
Speaker 1: a pyro enthusiast join us for the show. So, Alimona,
Speaker 1: thank you for being here. Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: You look quite familiar. I can't quite put my matchtick
Speaker 1: on it, but yeah, you see a lot of faces
Speaker 1: at the festive. Well, I'm I'm sure there are a
Speaker 1: lot of I have one of those faces too, like
Speaker 1: you know, one of the ones that lots of people have. Um,
Speaker 1: because we let's get your Jonathan Strickland mask at the
Speaker 1: tech stuff store today. No, they're not really, They're okay,
Speaker 1: But we're gonna talk about stuff like matches, which I
Speaker 1: understand you consider yourself somewhat of an expert on which
Speaker 1: I find perplexing. I am an expert on matches. It's
Speaker 1: it's a little wooden stick thing and then and then
Speaker 1: you you you you strike the end of it and
Speaker 1: and it in it, and then it goes boom, and
Speaker 1: then the pretty orange stuff comes out and it's very hot.
Speaker 1: It's odd to me that you would be so familiar
Speaker 1: with them, because the matches as you describe them, weren't
Speaker 1: available until the early nineteenth century, and if my math
Speaker 1: is correct, the renaissances before times of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: my whole life has been a lie. Fair enough, all right, Well, Alimona,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you could be here because I'm going to
Speaker 1: explain to you the history of matches, and if you
Speaker 1: have things you want to say or questions, you want
Speaker 1: to ask, then we can, you know, really focus on that.
Speaker 1: And there's sometimes where I'm going to ask you a
Speaker 1: question just to see what you know about things, And
Speaker 1: when we find out the depth of your ignorance, I
Speaker 1: will then illuminate by explaining exactly what the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation is. I really like the word illuminate, but
Speaker 1: I don't quite like the word ignorance. I think the
Speaker 1: man explaining part of the episode is just the guns.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna begin, as I said, with the history
Speaker 1: of matches. You know, you might think of it as
Speaker 1: the predecessor to the lighter. Uh, that's a lighter, lighter
Speaker 1: than what? Okay, right, what's a heavier? Is there a heavier? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is how this is gonna go us
Speaker 1: A lighter thing that produces flame over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, and yeah, you would love them. And inesting
Speaker 1: thing is that the modern match and the modern lighter
Speaker 1: actually were developed around the same time. They were co developed,
Speaker 1: and around the same time. We would normally think the
Speaker 1: matches must have come much earlier, but modern matches rely
Speaker 1: very heavily on something you and I completely lack chemistry.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about that. But we're going to
Speaker 1: start with matches. And really, when we talk about matches,
Speaker 1: you gotta look all the way back to China. The country,
Speaker 1: not the type of dishes. I can see your mind
Speaker 1: working right in front of me, Alumona, I got left
Speaker 1: the way China sounds when you break it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the country of China, Uh, they began to experiment using
Speaker 1: sticks dipped in sulfur. And this was not the type
Speaker 1: of match that you would strike against a surface and
Speaker 1: have it ignite. Instead, it was a way of lighting
Speaker 1: something and having it burn at a controlled rate so
Speaker 1: that you could transfer the fire from one place to another.
Speaker 1: For example, from say a roaring fire to a candle.
Speaker 1: You would want to be able to move that fire around.
Speaker 1: And as we all know, moving fire just with your
Speaker 1: hands is a bad idea because it's because it's hot.
Speaker 1: But it's very fun. Okay, all right, We're also going
Speaker 1: to stress to our listeners playing with fire is a
Speaker 1: dangerous thing once you get past the tingling sensation. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right now, Alamona, really let's let's refocus here. So
Speaker 1: those matches don't really fit our modern description of the word,
Speaker 1: and they would not really play into the type of
Speaker 1: strike matches that we think of when we hear the
Speaker 1: word match. So instead you have to go all the
Speaker 1: way up to the seventeen century, So a bit late
Speaker 1: in the day for you, Alimona, I'd be an old
Speaker 1: woman diving. I might be as old as years old.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, I guess you would definitely adhere to
Speaker 1: the philosophy that's better to burn out than to fade away.
Speaker 1: Good one, thank you. So in the in the in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, there was this, uh, this German alchemist,
Speaker 1: hennig Brandt, thank you. So he was attempting to do
Speaker 1: what many alchemists were trying to do. Oh I knowed
Speaker 1: alchemist is that's like a scientist, not really uh, predecessor
Speaker 1: to science. I would argue closer, I would argue closer
Speaker 1: to Professor Snape than a scientist. Yes, alchemy is all
Speaker 1: about the attempt to figure out ways to turn base
Speaker 1: metals or base materials into gold, which to this day
Speaker 1: perplexes me because Alamono, just just follow along with me here,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to explain to you the concept
Speaker 1: of supply and demand as well as that of value,
Speaker 1: right something. 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 concept foreign
Speaker 1: to me, but yes, yes, so you understand the idea
Speaker 1: of wealth, even though you may never have possessed it yourself. Right, So,
Speaker 1: alchemists wanted to find a way to turn other types
Speaker 1: of stuff into gold. But if you could do that,
Speaker 1: if you could turn say lead into gold, then you
Speaker 1: would suddenly have a surplus of gold. And one of
Speaker 1: the things, in fact, the chief thing that makes gold
Speaker 1: valuable is its scarcity. So if you've taken some thing
Speaker 1: that was valuable because it was scarce, and you made
Speaker 1: a whole bunch more of it, what do you think happens?
Speaker 1: Lots and lots of money? Is that right? Okay? All right,
Speaker 1: 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 of this gold that was valuable because
Speaker 1: of its scarcity, is no longer scarce, It is no
Speaker 1: longer valuable. Yes, it means that you would have way
Speaker 1: too much of it. And yeah, up until the point
Speaker 1: where you had an abundance of gold on the market,
Speaker 1: in which case the value would plummet. So I never
Speaker 1: understood alchemy from that perspective. But um, let's get dig
Speaker 1: a little deeper, because boy, it gets way more weird
Speaker 1: than that. So one of the important advancements that made
Speaker 1: matches possible was the discovery of phosphorus. So phosphoruss it's
Speaker 1: it's a naturally occurring element, but usually we wouldn't. It's
Speaker 1: usually bound up in other things. The less said about that,
Speaker 1: the better with you here, Alamona. But it's bound up
Speaker 1: with other things, and then if we can refine it,
Speaker 1: then we can use it as a component in things
Speaker 1: like matches. So hinnig Brand discovered how to isolate phosphorus.
Speaker 1: That's not what he was trying to do, but it
Speaker 1: is what he effectively ended up doing. Ah, he isolated
Speaker 1: phosphorus from urine. Yeah, yeah, I thought I would blind
Speaker 1: inside you. We're going to talk about pa science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, you get it all out there, Almona. So
Speaker 1: what are you saying that when when I use the privy,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting on a gold mine, or rather a phosphorus mind. Hinnig, Well,
Speaker 1: you're certainly sitting on a phosphorus mine, hinnig Brand, but
Speaker 1: perhaps it was a gold mine. Here was his line
Speaker 1: of color. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what Brand was thinking. No,
Speaker 1: you're you're on the right track. He was sitting there thinking,
Speaker 1: you know what, he's kind of yellow. Gold's yellow. Maybe
Speaker 1: P is yellow because there's gold in them, the RP.
Speaker 1: So he thought, how do I get the P away
Speaker 1: and keep the gold? Alchemists was so smart back then,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd think so. So here's what he did.
Speaker 1: Stop me if you heard this before he goes and
Speaker 1: he collects a lot of P, go ahead and ask
Speaker 1: me how much is a lot of P? How much
Speaker 1: is a lot of gallons of the stuff? How many
Speaker 1: friends did he have? It was just a Super Bowl weekend?
Speaker 1: How many how many close friends did he have? More
Speaker 1: fewer by the end of it than he did at
Speaker 1: the beginning of it. I'm sure it's 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 gonna do with it? And then
Speaker 1: he boiled it. He boiled the P. I know you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I've smelled the privs on a hot day at the
Speaker 1: Georgia Renaissance Festival. That's what you're thinking, isn't it allen? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a smell that will linger in
Speaker 1: your thoughts forever. Trust me. The first year I did
Speaker 1: it was still haven't forgotten. So soups gross. He boils it,
Speaker 1: which ends up evaporating a lot of the water out
Speaker 1: of the content of the urine, and what was left
Speaker 1: behind was described as a surap substance. No do not.
Speaker 1: And then as the stuff was heating up, it started
Speaker 1: to glow red hot. As it cooled, it turned black
Speaker 1: and became hard. If your urine turns red and the black,
Speaker 1: maybe you should go see it something. Maybe. So he
Speaker 1: then takes some of the hardened black stuff and he
Speaker 1: mix mixes it with some of the red hot glowing
Speaker 1: stuff and ends up noticing that it caught fire. It
Speaker 1: just combusts, It bursts into flame, and he didn't realize
Speaker 1: that what he had discovered was phosphorus. He actually thought, originally,
Speaker 1: and others did too, that he had come across the
Speaker 1: fabled Philosopher's stone. Um, not that kind of stone and urine.
Speaker 1: And eventually he referred to the stuff as cold fire
Speaker 1: because he knows that this phosphorus would glow in the dark.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't give off heat, but would glow in the dark. Weird.
Speaker 1: So if one were to refine this phosphorus further, you
Speaker 1: would eventually get to what's called white phosphorus. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: called yellow phosphorus because it's not really white white. Uh.
Speaker 1: This stuff is very dangerous because it ignites upon exposure
Speaker 1: to air. That sounds fun. Yeah, it's very much like you,
Speaker 1: So it wouldn't be for long it uh. So it
Speaker 1: ignites as soon as 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 have 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, uh, 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. Alimona, you're still here. I know. It's
Speaker 1: thank goodness we have all those blankets. Uh. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna move on. We just finished talking about pa science,
Speaker 1: which you were yah, I could tell. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: move on, and now we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: person named Jean Chancel. Oh he sounds pretty it's the
Speaker 1: fancy dude, Jean Chancel found a way to create a
Speaker 1: match using a chemical reaction. And this is probably the
Speaker 1: most hardcore metal way of lighting a match I have
Speaker 1: ever heard about. So, okay, not that kind of all right,
Speaker 1: you no, like like rock and roll metal. So he
Speaker 1: took a splint piece of wood and he coded it
Speaker 1: in a substance called potassium chlorate, and he also put
Speaker 1: in the same on the same mixture some sugar and
Speaker 1: some 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 this 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. So,
Speaker 1: potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent. Now, Alumona, I
Speaker 1: 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 get maybe
Speaker 1: one of the three a spring day at the Georgia
Speaker 1: Renaissance Fest. Okay, none of those three things are necessary. No,
Speaker 1: it needs fuel, it needs heat, and it needs an oxidizer.
Speaker 1: Typically the oxidizer for most fires that we encounter is
Speaker 1: the air oxygen oxygen as an oxidizer. Those three things
Speaker 1: are necessary. If you're missing any one of those three things,
Speaker 1: you cannot make fire. And if you have a fire,
Speaker 1: the fire will extinguish. So if you run out fuel,
Speaker 1: the fire goes out right. If you no longer have
Speaker 1: an oxidizer, the fire cannot burn anymore. If if the
Speaker 1: heat is removed from the fire, it will not continuously burn.
Speaker 1: It will the the the chemical reaction that is fire
Speaker 1: will stop. So potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent.
Speaker 1: The sugar is fuel. Uh. In fact, we all know
Speaker 1: sugar is fuel because if you ever had a lot
Speaker 1: of sugar like I suspect Alamona has had, you will
Speaker 1: be very energetic for at least a short while. And
Speaker 1: then potassium chlorate when it decomposes under heat, it releases
Speaker 1: molecular oxygen so thus you get the oxidizing effect there.
Speaker 1: All right, so you've got everything you need mixed up there.
Speaker 1: You've got the fuel and the oxidizer. There, you need
Speaker 1: to have the heat to start the reaction. Here's where
Speaker 1: the sulfuric acid comes in. When you dip this mixture
Speaker 1: of sugar and UH and potassium chlorate together in the
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid, 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, and if it touches
Speaker 1: organic material, it tends to char it not burn it
Speaker 1: like catch it on fire. It won't ignite, but it
Speaker 1: will char. Like if you just poured sulfuric acid on wood,
Speaker 1: the wood would char from that. So you definitely don't
Speaker 1: want to get it on yourself because you will suffer
Speaker 1: terrible injuries like Phantom of the Opera level injuries. It's
Speaker 1: a reference that I guess you wouldn't get Alamona, but
Speaker 1: 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 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 smoke it would give off had a
Speaker 1: foul odor. So there are a lot of downsides to
Speaker 1: this particular approach. Let's move forward to eighteen twenty six.
Speaker 1: Now we have an Englishman to talk about, Yes, someone 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 could 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: probably not on fire, yes, 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 hearth 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 PuF burst into flame. So pretty exciting
Speaker 1: for him. He immediately saw a 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. Fair Faraday? Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough Faraday. Uh recommended to Walker, Hey you should
Speaker 1: patent that, and he said, no, nonsense, nonsense, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to patent it because it's far too interesting and important.
Speaker 1: People should be able to do with us whatever they want.
Speaker 1: And 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 the super
Speaker 1: I'm sure that excellent leader. It's a good Anglican reference.
Speaker 1: So this began around eighty nine. And these matches again
Speaker 1: can be struck on any surface and would ignite. And
Speaker 1: they were still pretty spectacular matches, like the burst of
Speaker 1: flame was pretty bright and violent, also smelly. Again you
Speaker 1: identify with that and there, and they were more than
Speaker 1: a little bit dangerous. And other chemists over the time
Speaker 1: would play with different mixtures, and some of them would
Speaker 1: even use white phosphorus. Now you remember what I said
Speaker 1: earlier about white phosphorus rights. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: when you refine it down to white phosphorus, if it's
Speaker 1: exposed to the air, it will catch fire. That's what
Speaker 1: I want for Christmas in case, Well, they made matches
Speaker 1: out of the stuff, so you are actual matches that
Speaker 1: had white phosphorus, and the idea was that they had
Speaker 1: a slight coating on the outside so that it wasn't
Speaker 1: constantly exposed to air, and that striking it would break
Speaker 1: that coating, exposed the white phosphorus to air. It would
Speaker 1: then have this exothermic reaction I was talking about that
Speaker 1: would ignite the end of the match stick and you
Speaker 1: would get this very bright, powerful uh light the match. However,
Speaker 1: it also meant that if the match heads were damaged
Speaker 1: at all and encountered the air, they would ignite spontaneously.
Speaker 1: So typically you would have a container that was air
Speaker 1: tight to keep these matches inside, because you didn't want
Speaker 1: to risk the danger of the matches going off on
Speaker 1: their own. Because this is all about controlled experiences with fire, Alamona,
Speaker 1: not not just rampant fire, lit fire. Your your sympathy
Speaker 1: is lie in different areas than my own. But h
Speaker 1: other chemist chemists would play with these different approaches trying
Speaker 1: to get it just right, and over time there was
Speaker 1: a decision to move away from white phosphorus matches, not
Speaker 1: just because they were dangerous. They were incredibly popular by
Speaker 1: the way. People loved the fact that you could strike
Speaker 1: these against anything. They were very convenient, but misunderstood certainly
Speaker 1: dangerous because also it was discovered that people working in
Speaker 1: the manufacturing facilities. They were making these white phosphorus matches.
Speaker 1: We're starting to get sick, and they developed an illness
Speaker 1: that became known. And I am not making this up
Speaker 1: as Fossey jaw. Yeah, would you like to know the
Speaker 1: symptoms or you want to take a guess? I think
Speaker 1: that was my grandmother's name, Old Lady false Jaw. I
Speaker 1: was acting you to say you would be wearing a
Speaker 1: bowler hat and doing jazz hands and wearing a black unitard.
Speaker 1: I don't understand that it's fair. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: Fossey joke. No. Actually, this was a truly terrible, terrible disease,
Speaker 1: and it was disfiguring disease. So the exposure to phosphorus
Speaker 1: vapor would cause the bone of the lower jaw to
Speaker 1: dissolve slowly to the point where people had completely would
Speaker 1: have to have their lower jaws removed because if they didn't,
Speaker 1: then the the illness would progress to the point where
Speaker 1: they would experience oregon failure and then die. So this
Speaker 1: is what we call a bad thing. And they would
Speaker 1: lose teeth throughout the process, they'd lose bone mass and
Speaker 1: their jaws. Their jaws would actually give off a greenish
Speaker 1: white light in the dark, they would actually glow a
Speaker 1: bit from all the phosphor that they were or fosse
Speaker 1: for us that they were absorbing. So pretty terrifying stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time that this was happening, it was during
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, which again Alimona, it's ahead of your time.
Speaker 1: But when the peasants talk about revolution, in this case,
Speaker 1: the peasants also were uh in trouble during the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution because they were being exploited terribly. So this was
Speaker 1: a time of great industry where you have these huge
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities that are being built and labor is needed,
Speaker 1: but labor is also plentiful. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are no longer farmers there in there in
Speaker 1: search for work, so they all start looking for places
Speaker 1: where they can get employment. They start joining different facilities,
Speaker 1: including matchmaking facilities. A lot of young women did this.
Speaker 1: I could work that these were the women who were
Speaker 1: suffering from fossey jaw Alimona. These are not not women
Speaker 1: that I'm just saying, I'd be qualified. All From the
Speaker 1: industrialist point of view, these workers were disposable because if
Speaker 1: someone got sick or died or whatever, there were a
Speaker 1: hundred others who were just desperate for a job. So
Speaker 1: this was a terrible situation where people were being exploited
Speaker 1: and they were getting sick, and it all got to
Speaker 1: the point where the women organized what was called the
Speaker 1: Great Match Girls Strike. Was the pun intended? It's an
Speaker 1: excellent question, but it really was like a union strike. Uh.
Speaker 1: They weren't striking matches. I understand that. It's just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes a pun, a really good pun, just falls into it.
Speaker 1: This time it is an unintentional pun. Uh. So all
Speaker 1: four women walked out of a manufacturing company, a matchmaking
Speaker 1: company called Bryant and May in protest of conditions. Eventually
Speaker 1: they were able to win some protection, although a lot
Speaker 1: of the white phosphorus stuff was still largely ignored because
Speaker 1: they were so popular. There was an alternative that I'm
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: years 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 was astounding because
Speaker 1: you're talking about a moment in history where people had
Speaker 1: access to things that would allow them to generate light
Speaker 1: after the sun went down. Now, Alamonia, 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 was.
Speaker 1: There was at one time where I got a little
Speaker 1: excited and then yeah, well apart from like conflagrations, you
Speaker 1: don't really see village boom. It was all bright and
Speaker 1: everyone was happy. That That explains why we went from
Speaker 1: Willy Nilly on the wash Over to Newcastle. There was
Speaker 1: actually a relocation of the Georgia in the Suncestival. All
Speaker 1: of that is true. By the way, you can all
Speaker 1: serve the relocation part. I'm not so certain about the
Speaker 1: yeah 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, Alimona, you're still following me right somewhere.
Speaker 1: I got a little bit lost along the path, and
Speaker 1: here you're 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 and in episodes and torments, the hosts of
Speaker 1: that show. The hosts that show are are Ben Bolan
Speaker 1: and Noel Brown. I'm commenting you match made in so
Speaker 1: similar that it's actually making me regret quisters segments at
Speaker 1: this point. Alright, So, in the mid to late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: different inventors were using stuff like lead ox side and
Speaker 1: potassium chlorate to kind of tweak matches. They were trying
Speaker 1: to make the matches burn without generating as much smelly smoke,
Speaker 1: like because he's still smelled really bad. They're very sulfuric um.
Speaker 1: They were trying to find ways so that they were
Speaker 1: quieter because they were very loud when you were striking
Speaker 1: these matches the early ones, and with a more controlled burn.
Speaker 1: There was an Austrian scientist named Anton von Schrutter who yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and he used red phosphorus instead of white phosphorus, and
Speaker 1: he did that in to create a more stable match,
Speaker 1: one that would not be prone to spontaneous combustion. So, okay,
Speaker 1: well you're sad, but most people meant that if you
Speaker 1: were to accidentally scratch the end of the match head,
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about it bursting into flame.
Speaker 1: And this is what paved the way to the modern
Speaker 1: safety match. So a safety match is a very clever
Speaker 1: invention in which the ingredients needed for combustion are not
Speaker 1: all contained within the match head itself, so you divide them.
Speaker 1: You put some of the ingredients on the match head,
Speaker 1: but you put the other ingredients on the striking surface
Speaker 1: that you're going to use to ignite the match. And
Speaker 1: this is how you make it safe, because it's not
Speaker 1: gonna even if you rub two matches together, they're lacking
Speaker 1: the ingredient that will allow them to combust, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about them like jostling around and
Speaker 1: then setting themselves on fire. Uh So in a modern matchbook,
Speaker 1: you can think of one half of the ingredients is
Speaker 1: being a the match stick. The other half are on
Speaker 1: that little strip that you use when you strike the
Speaker 1: match and ignite it. And this is why, uh you
Speaker 1: don't have to, you know, freak out about those matches.
Speaker 1: Just like hitting the ground or something, they'll never ignite
Speaker 1: unless it just happens to be hot enough to hit
Speaker 1: their 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 al Amona's show, it's my show.
Speaker 1: And it's also why um these matches you can't replicate
Speaker 1: that 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.
Speaker 1: And there 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 off of other materials,
Speaker 1: but they still do the same thing, and that you
Speaker 1: can 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 little right, And then the striking surface would have
Speaker 1: the coating of red phosphorus, So the red phosphorus is
Speaker 1: actually on whatever surface you're supposed to strike the match on,
Speaker 1: and so bringing them together and creating friction is enough
Speaker 1: to light the little suckers. All right, Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do another episode where I'm gonna talk more about lighters,
Speaker 1: but I want to give you a little bit of
Speaker 1: of a preview of that, Alimona, because this is you
Speaker 1: seem to be fascinated by the concept of a lighter.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk about the earliest thing that
Speaker 1: people refer to as a lighter, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be the close of this episode. So lighters, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, we're being developed around the same time that
Speaker 1: matches were. It's not like we got matches right and
Speaker 1: then we moved on to lighters. They were independent lines
Speaker 1: of invention. And innovation. So the first lighter, most people agree,
Speaker 1: was made by a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Dobert Reiner.
Speaker 1: Great name, he wins, he wins the names. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he a numerous contributions to chemistry. He it's not just
Speaker 1: the guy who made the first lighter. He did lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. But for our purposes, the thing we want
Speaker 1: to look at is this later that he made the
Speaker 1: double Reiner lamp, and this was an ingenious invention. It
Speaker 1: is also tricky to describe without pictures, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try and do it in Alimona. Honestly, the only way
Speaker 1: 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. You're 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 cylin are down through the
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid in the jar. And because the air is
Speaker 1: trapped inside the cylinder, it will push the sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: out of the way. It will displace it, So the
Speaker 1: level 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: the top of the cylinder is dangling. Inside the cylinder
Speaker 1: is a piece of zinc. Okay, the metal zinc. It
Speaker 1: is attached to a tether. It's dangling in the middle
Speaker 1: 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: bubbles 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 s sense of hydrogen and oxygen, it
Speaker 1: creates a chemical reaction that's exothermic, which means it gives
Speaker 1: off heat. Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable. That I'm sure
Speaker 1: you would. Does the phrase oh the humanity mean anything
Speaker 1: to you. That's what everyone screamed when I when it
Speaker 1: was really dark that one night to night, And yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well then you're totally on board. So this means that
Speaker 1: the hydrogen gas catches fire and you've got a lighter
Speaker 1: because the hydrogen from the cylinder has come out, it's
Speaker 1: hit that platinum sponge. The platinum sponge has that exothermic
Speaker 1: catalyzes an exothermic reaction that then ignites the hydrogen gas
Speaker 1: that's still coming out through the valve. As long as
Speaker 1: the valve is open, this is still going, but hydrogen
Speaker 1: flames are essentially invisible. You can't really see them. However,
Speaker 1: if you were to put anything within that that section
Speaker 1: where the valve is open, it would catch fire. So
Speaker 1: if you put a match in there, it would make
Speaker 1: the match catch on fire because even though it's invisible,
Speaker 1: it's flaming. It actually is happening. It's it's burning at
Speaker 1: that moment, so you can use it to light you know,
Speaker 1: matches or candles or whatever. Alright, 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 lighter 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 alamona uh that
Speaker 1: is I thank you. You have been the most unique
Speaker 1: guest I've ever had on tech Stuff and I once
Speaker 1: had strong bad in here. Oh he sounds yeah. He
Speaker 1: gave me a sign off even it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that episode. I actually followed that
Speaker 1: up with an episode about lighters to talk about how
Speaker 1: they work and the physics and mechanics behind them. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about those, you can
Speaker 1: look through the archives of tech Stuff. It was in
Speaker 1: you know, early February of when we published that one
Speaker 1: as well, and h later this week we'll have some
Speaker 1: new episodes inspired by listeners who have reached out to me.
Speaker 1: If you would like to reach out and give me
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, the best way to do that is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter and the handle for our show is Text
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and I'll talk to You again really
Speaker 1: soon YEA. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
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