August i i, 1898] 



NATURE 



345 



PHOSPHORUS IN LUCIFER MATCHES. 



THE recent omission by a well-known firm of match 

 manufacturers to comply with the regulations 

 relative to notification to the Home Office of cases of 

 phosphorus-necrosis among their employes, and the 

 consequent strictures in the House of Commons on the 

 adequacy of the present methods of factory inspection in 

 the case of dangerous trades, have once more drawn 

 attention to the evils which arise from the employment of 

 " ordinary," or, as it is frequently called, " yellow " phos- 

 phorus in the manufacture of lucifer matches. As was 

 recently pointed out in the course of the debate upon 

 the Home Office vote, the story is really a very old 

 one. " Phossy jaw " has been on more than one occasion 

 the subject of Parliamentary inquiry. Practically nothing 

 in the way of remedy has followed from these inquiries. 

 The public has been shocked, for a time, with the tales of 

 what the " lucifer disease " may mean to the unfortunate 

 wretch who may be smitten with it, and then the matter 

 is forgotten, until such a startling episode as that which 

 occurred the other day once more rouses attention to it. 

 The temper of the House on the occasion of the debate 

 referred to was, however, unmistakable, and faithfully 

 reflected the state of opinion outside. The country has 

 at length made up its mind that some solution must be 

 found. The old excuses that nothing is possible will no 

 longer suffice. There is a growing conviction that a 

 remedy is at hand, and if the manufacturers will not 

 voluntarily adopt it, the Legislature must arm the Home 

 Office with the necessary powers to compel the adoption. 



The word pJiosphortis was originally applied to any 

 substance, solid or liquid, which had the property of 

 shining in the dark, and the characters of the various 

 phosphori up to that time known were made the subject 

 of inquiry by Robert Boyle, about the middle of the 

 seventeenth century. The term has, however, practically 

 lost its generic sense, and has become restricted to the 

 wax-like substance discovered by Brand, of Hamburg, in 

 1674, and which was originally known as the noctiluca or 

 the phosphorus mirabilis. There is some evidence that 

 phosphorus was known to the Arabs : to judge from the 

 mode of its preparation it was probably identical with the 

 "carbuncle" of Alchild Bechil. It was first brought to 

 this country in 1677 by Krafift, who purchased the secret 

 of its preparation from the Hamburg alchemist, and it 

 naturally made a great sensation when exhibited to the 

 " experimentarian philosophers " of Gresham College, as 

 Hobbes sneeringly called the progenitors of the Royal 

 Society. Boyle seems to have obtained some hint of its 

 origin, or the mode of its manufacture, and in one of the 

 last of his scientific papers he describes in detail a method 

 by which it may be obtained. 



Phosphorus was first commercially made in this country 

 by Godfrey Hankewitz, who appears to have acted as a 

 laboratory assistant to Boyle, and who probably made it 

 by Boyle's method. " This phosphorus," wrote Hankewitz, 

 "is a subject that occupies much the thoughts and fancies 

 of some alchemists who work on microcosmical sub- 

 stances, and out of it they promise themselves golden 

 mountains." Nobody of his time made more in the way 

 of gold out of phosphorus than did Mr. Hankewitz at his 

 little shop in the Strand, for he seems to have had the 

 monopoly of its sale for many years. Owing to the diffi- 

 culty of its preparation, and the comparatively small yield, 

 its price was relatively very high, and even down to 

 about the middle of the eighteenth century it brought 

 from 10 to 12 ducats an ounce. The discovery by Gahn, 

 in 1769, that calcium phosphate was the main constituent 

 of bone-ash gave a great impetus to the manufacture of 

 phosphorus, and it is from one or other of the many forms 

 of calcium phosphate, but principally from bone-ash, that 

 the greater portion of the phosphorus now manufactured 

 is obtained. 



NO, 1502, VOL. 58] 



The ease with which phosphorus is inflamed must have 

 led to many attempts to employ it as a ready source of 

 fire, in spite of its high price. One of the earliest of 

 these methods consisted in rubbing a fragment of the 

 element between folds of coarse paper and igniting a 

 sulphur-tipped splint — such as the brimstone matches 

 which accompanied the tinder-box — by its flame. Such 

 a method, it need hardly be said, was highly dangerous, 

 and as the burns produced by phosphorus are extremely 

 painful and peculiarly difficult to heal, it quickly fell 

 into disfavour. Indeed, the substance itself acquired so 

 evil a reputation that its employment in any form was 

 absolutely prohibited in several Continental States. The 

 phosphorus bottle of Cagniard de la Tour was prac- 

 tically the last attempt to effect the ignition of a sulphur 

 splint by the direct action of phosphorus, i.e. without 

 the intermediate action of an oxidising composition. 



Friction matches were first made in the beginning 

 of this century. Chancel, in 1805, had devised the 

 "oxymuriate match," in which potassium chlorate, then 

 newly discovered by Berthollet, was mixed with sugar 

 and gum water, and the mixture affixed to the end of a 

 slip of wood, which was caused to ignite by immersion 

 in oil of vitriol. By adding a small quantity of phos- 

 phorus to the mixture it was found that the match could 

 be ignited by simple friction, but such matches were 

 highly dangerous both to prepare and to use ; and,, 

 although various attempts were made to minimise their 

 danger by the addition of such substances as magnesia 

 and plaster of Paris, the friction matches failed for a time 

 to supersede the " chemical matches " of Chancel, which 

 continued to be made and sold in increasing numbers 

 down to about 1845. 



The credit of having made the first phosphorus friction 

 match is usually attributed to Derosne ; but, according 

 to Nicklds, Derosne's match was merely an improvement 

 of that made by Derepas in 18 12, which in its turn was 

 only a development of a phosphorus match produced in 

 1805-6. The late Sir Isaac Holden was wont to claim 

 the credit of having been the first to make a phosphorus 

 friction match in this country. 



It is worthy of note, however, that the first friction 

 matches made in England were free from phosphorus. 

 These were the "lucifers" or "Congreves" of John 

 Walker, of Stockton-on-Tees, first manufactured in 

 1827. They consisted of strips of stout cardboard, or 

 thin wooden splints, about 2i inches long, coated to 

 about one-third of their length with sulphur, and tipped 

 with a mixture of antimony sulphide, potassium chlorate, 

 and starch and gum. From the London Atlas of January 

 10, 1830, we learn that they were sold in tin boxes, each 

 containing about fifty matches, for half-a-crown a box. 

 With each box was supplied a folded piece of glass- 

 paper ; on drawing the match between the folds the 

 composition inflamed and ignited the sulphur on the 

 splint. Matches tipped with a similar composition were 

 made at about the same period in France by Sasaresse 

 and Merckel, and in Austria by Siegel. 



In Germany the invention of the phosphorus match is 

 ascribed to Kammerer ; but the most prominent name 

 in connection with its manufacture is Preschel, of 

 Vienna, who, with Moldenhauer, of Darmstadt, made 

 Austria and South Germany the chief sources of the 

 supply of matches in Europe. It was Moldenhauer 

 who first introduced magnesia and chalk into the 

 composition in order to neutralise the effect of the deli- 

 quescent oxidation products of phosphorus. To-day the 

 chief producing match country of the world is Scandi- 

 navia, where there are upwards of fourscore factories, 

 the foremost of which is at Jonkoping, employing about 

 6000 workpeople. 



No sooner had the manufacture of the lucifer match 

 become a well-established industry than the attention 

 of various Governments was called to the effect of 



