MATCHES; CONGREVES; LUC1FF,RS. The manufacture of these humble and cheap articles marks a curious stage in the progress of civilisation, where luxuries become conveniences, end then necessariea.
The friction of two pieces of dry wood we now regard as a barbarous mode of procuring light; yet it is a scientific one, where the materials for a quicker process aro wanting. The flint and steel bad a long reign in this country ; the tinder-box formed an item in Wolverhampton manufactures; and the sulphur-tipped matches, arranged in bunches spread out in fan-like manner, formed the stock in trade of many an itinerant dealer. As mechanical ingenuity supplied the flint and steel and tinder-box to supersede the rubbing sticks, so has chemical in genuity made a wide step in advance, by showing how to furnish the little splints or matches with a composition which will kindle by slight friction.
Whether called Corm-eves, Lucifers, or Instantaneous Lights, these small but valuable articles are now made in almost inconceivable quantities. Hand cutting has long been unable to produce the splints in sufficient quantity; nothing less than steam power can do this. At one among many saw-mills in London, these matches are made in the following way. .The wood employed is American yellow pine. It is first sawn into blocks about 12 inches long, 5 or 6 wide, and 3 thick. Several of these blocks are placed in a machine where a number of revolving cutters, worked with great rapidity, slice the blocks up into layers, and eut the layers into splints. One machine will cut up two million splints in a day. The splints, as liberated from the machine, elide down into another room, where women and girls tie them up in boxes, the boxes in parcels, and the parcels in bundles. These splints are sold by the hogshead to the lucifer match makers, each hogshead containing perhaps two million splints. At one saw-mill alone, it is estimated that the timber of four hundred large pine trees is cut up yearly for lucifer matches; and there are some establishments in England where as many as five million splints are made in a day. If the splints are to be cylindrical instead of square, the wood is shaped by being forced through small circular apertures in a metal plate : great pressure, and great sharpness at the edges of the holes, being necessary. But Germany exceeds even England in this branch of industry,as in most other kinds of wood-work. In Saxony, undipped matches, two inches in length, can be bought for 5 thalers per million, about 1400 for a farthing ; and boxes to contain them are sold at 2d. per 100. At various places in Bohemia, untipped splints are sold wholesale at a price that scarcely amounts to one farthing per 3000; and at Schiittenhefen tipped matches, boxes and all, containing 80 matches in each box, are sold at the rate of about one penny for a dozen boxes. This degree of cheapness was attained in 1851 ; and it is likely that prices have low ered rather than risen since.
The chemistry of matches has undergone curious changes. At one time phosphoric tapers were made,—complex, dangerous, and expensive.
These were supplanted by phosphorus bottles, in which sulphur matches were ignited by contact with a bit of phosphorus. A more scientific but less-used arrangement was the pyrophorus, in which light was pro duced by exposing to the air a calcined mixture of flour, sugar, and alum. The instantaneous light of Volta was an elaborate apparatus for producing light by the action of electricity upon hydrogen. Dobereiner's instantaneous light was a little less complex than this. The light syringe was a kind of squirt, which ignited a piece of German tinder by means of the heat expelled from air when powerfully condensed. All of the above were superseded, for popular use, by the orymuriate matches. Chlorate or oxymuriate of potash was mixed into a paste with gum and vermilion; matches were tipped with this composition ; and when the tipped end of a match was dipped into a bottle containing a bit of asbestus moistened with sulphuric acid, it instantly ignited. Elegant metal boxes fitted with this apparatus had a very extensive sale for many years, at prices which gradually fell from a guinea to a shilling. It was not until friction was rendered adequate to the kindling of a match, that the principle of cheapness came fairly into play, by allowing the makers to dispense with liquids, bottles, and complicated arrangements. The congrcre vanquished all competitors as a light-giver. The chemical composition which gives to the matches their easy-igniting power, can now be bought at a very low price; and as children are chiefly employed in the manufacture, the matches can be sold extremely cheap. Whether the colour be red, yellow, brown, blue, or green, the composition possesses the requisite quality in respect to ignition by friction ; and chemists are now acquainted with many such. There are many processes and compositions adopted. In one, the matches are dipped into a mixture of phosphorus, oil of turpentine, and flowers of sulphur ; and afterwards into a mixture of gum arable, chlorate of potash, and soot. In a second method the composition consists of chlorate of potash, phosphorus, gum arabie, and gelatine; the matches being dipped into melted sulphur before being dipped in this composition. In a third method, the composition consists of gum arabic, vermilion, phosphorus, and saltpetre. Chlorate matches are dipped into a mixture of chlorate of potash, flowers of sulphur, powdered sugar, gum arabic, and vermilion. The dipping of the end of the splint into melted sulphur, and then into a melted composition of which phosphorus is one of the ingredients, is a very dangerous employment, which has led to many sad calamities. It is also found that the phosphorio fumes tend to induce jaw-diseases, and other maladies, under which the work-people suffer. There is a kind of phosphorus, called amorphous or allotropic, which is said to be free from many of the evils of common phosphorus ; but various circum stances have prevented its introduction to any great extent in the match manufacture.