John Walker (inventor)

The exact date of Walker's invention of the friction match is uncertain, the first extant record of his work being a note about a sale upon credit^[2] dated 7 April 1827.^[5] The note further mentions "No. 30", however, which may have indicated the batch number^[2] and might imply the actual invention had occurred the previous year in 1826.^[6]

He had already been creating variations on Jean Chancel's dipping chemical matches for use by local hunters.^[2] Several chemical mixtures were already known that would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. Having mixed his percussion powder with a Chancel match, Walker found the resulting match ignited during an accidental strike against his hearth.^[2] He did not make his formulation public^[7] or even record it in his notes, such that it was necessary to later analyze his products to establish that they were wooden sticks 3 inches long by ⁠1/6⁠ inches wide by ⁠1/20⁠ inches high (7.6×0.4×0.1 cm)^[2] dipped in sulfur^[3] and tipped with a mixture of equal parts of antimony trisulfide and potassium chlorate^[2] bound to the wood with gumwater allowed to dry in place.^[8] Walker's matches were stored in a tin cylinder that included a piece of sandpaper ("glass-paper"). To light each match, the paper was folded in half and the match drawn through it.^[2]

He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery and started marketing his matches, originally listed in his records as sulphurata hyperoxygenata frict.^[2] but renamed "friction lights" by September 1827 and occasionally "attrition lights" in 1828.^[5] (Despite the confusion of many later accounts,^[9] Walker never referred to them as "matches", "lucifers", or "Congreves".)^[10] From 1827–1829, Walker sold a few hundred sets of matches at the price of 1 shilling 2 pence for 100 matches and the tin or 1 shilling flat for 84 matches and the tin.^[2]

Isaac Holden supposedly arrived at a similar formulation independently in October 1829,^{[citation needed]} which a student quickly passed on to his father, the London chemist Samuel Jones.^[11][12] Jones began commercializing a version of Holden's product throughout Britain as the "Promethean" or "lucifer match" (Latin: lucifer, "light-bearer"). Its popularity—and much lower price^[13]—prompted Walker to stop making his own formulation by 1830.^[5] Shortly thereafter, strike-anywhere matches employing white phosphorus instead of Walker's antimony trisulfide quickly overran the market^[2] until the invention and popularization of the red phosphorus safety match—generally credited to the Swedish chemist Gustaf Erik Pasch—in the 1850s and 1860s.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Walker.

• "John Walker & The Match", This is Stockton
• "John Walker's Friction Light", A History of the World in 100 Objects, BBC
• John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees - Inventor of the Friction Match on YouTube