Introduction to Matches and Sparks

1. The history of matchsticks and sparks

Humans often need to use fire in their daily life. About hundreds of thousands of years ago, human beings took advantage of the accidental opportunity of nature to use the fire caused by lightning strikes on dead branches and leaves on the ground, and retrieved the fire and kept it in caves for roasting meat, heating and frightening wild beasts. Start drilling wood to make fire.

Gunpowder was invented in the Tang Dynasty, and the primary "match stick" appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty. It looks like smearing sulfur on dry wood chips, hitting sparks with flint, and quickly igniting the wood chips. But this kind of "match" is inseparable from the fire source, and it still cannot be easily rubbed to catch fire.

In the 19th century, there was a French boy named Charlie Soria who had a strong interest in chemistry. Charlie's wild idea: If you add some phosphorus to these mixtures, there might be sparks when you tap or rub them. He experimented on his own and was burned.

But Charlie was not discouraged. He used a small wooden stick, soaked it in sulfur, and rubbed it on the phosphorous, and sparks were formed on the top of the wooden stick. And further changing the composition of the chemical mixture, the match stick was finally invented, which was a thing in 1831.

Later, Professor Pasch from Stockholm, Sweden, developed a match made of sulfur as a medicine head. But this kind of match made of yellow phosphorus is not only highly toxic, but also easy to cause spontaneous combustion.

In 1852, in the city of Jencher, Sweden, a man named Johan Lennonström further improved the matches at that time and made the world's first "safety matches" with red phosphorus instead of yellow phosphorus. At the same time, the world's first open-air matchmaking workshop was established.

In the middle of the 19th century, exquisite matches were introduced into China from abroad as "treasures" of tribute to the Qing Dynasty royal family, and were called "foreign fire" at that time. In 1890, the Swedes opened China's first match factory in Shanghai.

After the Sino-Japanese War, a large number of matchsticks were imported from Japan and other countries, and "foreign fire" occupied the Chinese market for more than half a century. In 1894, Hubei established two match companies, Juchang and Shengchang, which were jointly established by officials and businessmen. Since then, China has produced its own matches for the first time.

The amount of wood used to make matches in the world is staggering. China uses tens of thousands of cubic meters of wood to make matchsticks every year. Now several match factories have produced a wax paper stem match, which not only has the advantages of good combustion performance, but also saves a lot of wood.

2. The development of matchsticks

With the development of science and technology, the special custom matchsticks produced by countries all over the world are full of tricks. Such as toy matches, flash matches, anti-theft matches, signal matches, windproof matches, waterproof matches, colored matchsticks, large matchsticks, long matchsticks, wooden matchsticks, etc.

Due to the continuous development of matches, more and more people collect matchbox stickers like stamp collecting, commonly known as "sparks". The patterns on it are colorful, revolutionary holy places, natural scenery, historical sites, historical relics, cultural celebrities, flowers, birds, insects, and fish. It attracts “spark” lovers with its unique artistic charm.

A small matchstick is the crystallization of human wisdom. The poet praised it: the match contributed a short life, but brought light to the world.