Spark

led to some brilliant discoveries. The traffic light, the telephone, and even liquid paper all come from people who've been struck by the right idea at the right time. Soldiers during the late sixteen hundreds had also experienced their own light bulb moments, emphasis on the light part. Back then, soldiers carried muskets into battle. They used flint and gunpowder to fire a little metal ball from a barrel of

their rifle. But they quickly realized that the spark created when the real struck flint could be used for other things. Broken muskets and pistols weren't of much use as weapons, but they could certainly help the men see in the dark. Early on, a soldier would fill the barrel of a malfunctioning gun with tinder, such as dried out pieces of wood or brush, and then they'd fire the gun as usual. The spark that resulted would light the tinder inside and

create a kind of torch. What they didn't realize at the time was that they had invented the world's first lighters. Eventually, gun manufacturers started taking their old, broken pistols and converting them into flintlock lighters for home use. These devices looked like guns with candle holders affixed to the top. One pull of the trigger and a flame would spark into a small reservoir at the front. A candle could then be tipped for the flame before placing it inside the

holder on top of the lighter. It wasn't until eighteen twenty three, though, when one man found a less violent way to create a steady flame. His name was Johann Wolfgang dober Reiner, and he designed a jar that combined three things, hydrogen gas with a platinum sponge and oxygen. The chemical reaction caused the hydrogen to ignite, creating a flame, and he called his creation a dober Reiner's lamp. They became quite popular with over a million sold over the

next several years. But three years later another inventor started working on his own method for starting impromptu fires. John Walker was a chemist and druggist from England who had a passion for combustion, but not in a creepy, destructive way. He wanted to find the right mixture of chemicals that would provide a flame that would burn slowly on a stick of wood. He'd been working with various concoctions when

he accidentally struck a wooden stick against his hearth. The stick had been dipped in Walker's special brew, and it produced a flame instantly. It was at that moment he realized that he had done it. Walk began coating wooden sticks in sulfur before dipping them in a combination of potassium chlorates, gum arabic and sulfide of antimony. He called his invention friction lights, although today we know them better

as matches. The concept of the match, though, dates back to ancient China, where people would soak pinewood sticks with sulfur and bring them close to a flame so that they had something to light their lamps with. But these were not friction matches that we know today. For those we can thank John Walker. Unfortunately, a man named Charles Souria from France changed the formula. He substituted white phosphorus

for the antimony sulfide. This caused two big problems. First, these new matches didn't only light when struck against a rough surface. If they weren't stored properly, they could spontaneously ignite and start a massive blaze. The other problem was

that white sulfurus was very toxic. There were numerous deaths attributed to white phosphorus poisoning during the mid nineteenth century, and those who manufactured the matches were affected by a condition known as Fossey jaw, or a phosphorus necrosis of the jaw. It wasn't until the eighteen fifties when white phosphorus was replaced with a red variety and moved from the head of the match to the striking surface on

the side of the box. These new matches were called safety matches, and by nineteen twenty five, almost every country had either outlawed the use of white phosphorus or taxed it so heavily that it just wasn't worth incorporating. Looking back, it's interesting to see how our mind play tricks on us because the idea of a match is simple, a stick of wood dipped in some chemicals. It's far less complicated than a contraption filled with metal and gas and

moving parts. It may be hard to imagine, but the lighter predates the fiction match by a few hundred years, and just thinking about that gets me all fired up. Trust is not easy to build, especially as a new business. It could take a long time, even years, before a customer's loyalty is earned. But one misstep early on and it could spell the end of something great before it

has a chance to truly grow. And just like what happened to Nicholas a pair Born in France in seventeen forty nine, Nicholas was a sort of middle child in his massive family. He was the ninth of eleven children, then worked at his parents in until he was twenty. He then spun off on his own with one of his brothers to open a brewery together. Nicholas had always

been drawn to the culinary arts. From seventeen eighty four to seventeen ninety five he worked as a chef and confectioner in Paris, but it was in that final year as a chef when he started exploring something new and exciting, food preservation. He began storing things like jellies, soups, and vegetables in glass jars, which he sealed with cork and wax before dunking them in boiling water to cook them.

Historians claimed that this technique was not new at the time, but Nicholas was the first to do it on a wide scale. It took a few years, but by the early nineteenth century, the entrepreneur had opened the world's first factory dedicated to bottling and preserving food. He eventually graduated from jellies and jams to more substantial foods like beef and eggs. Even full dishes could be preserved using Nicholas's method.

His technique of ceiling and boiling each jar was given the name appetization, but it cost a lot of money to preserve food. The equipment was expensive, and Nicholas himself was lousy at business. Only two years after his factory opened, it closed down and the father of food science was bankrupt. But his idea lived on, and people continued to store their fruits and vegetables using Nicholas's ceiling method. Of course,

there was still the problem of the jars themselves. Nicholas had started with champagne bottles before moving on to thicker, wider mouthed bottles that could accommodate larger food items. It wasn't until eighteen fifty eight, fifty two years after the Apport factory closed down, when a new idea hit the market. It had been invented by a New Jersey man named John Landis. No not the director of Animal House. This

John was an inventor. He had gotten his start as a tinsmith before pattenting a new kind of product, one that would take canning and food preservation to a whole new level. Rather than rely on cork and wax to seal canning jars as Nicholas a pair had done, John created a jar with a metal lid that could be

screwed on instead. It was originally made with the zinc cap that had been lined with milk glass, a type of colored glass used in everything from pottery to clock faces, and just below the lip of the jar sat a rubber gasket that would help seal everything once the lid was tightened over the top. It was a game changer, and others continued to improve its design over the next fifty years. For example, a man named Alexander Kerr created lids that had rubber seals set around their rim rather

than on the jars themselves. In nineteen fifteen, he introduced the lid that separated into two pieces. Since the lined center of the lid would wear out faster than the rim, canners no longer had to toss out the whole lid. They only had to replace the middle portion, a design that endures to this day. John eventually sold his patents to Lewis R. Boyd's Sheet Metal Screw Company in eighteen

fifty nine. Twelve years later, John and Boyd went into business together and license their jars to other glassmakers, But because he had not patented any of his improved designs over the years, the courts ruled that he had forfeited his patent due to abandonment. From that point on, other companies were free to create their own jars just like John's. Today, though one company stands tall as the largest manufacturer of glass canning jars, the Ball Corporation, based in Broomfield, Colorado.

Thanks to the work of Nicholas Apear and later John Landis Mason, the Mason Jar remains the gold standard for long term food preserve and all it took to make it was a little know how and a can do attitude. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Loore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.