Rerun: Firestarter

is an episode called Firestarter. It's about the development of matches primarily, and um, I thought it was appropriate because we just had the fourth of July weekend, so that typically involves lots of stuff like fireworks and grilling and things like that, stuff where matches might come in handy. So here's an episode about the development of matches. And

also I gotta I gotta warn you. Uh. This episode has a special guest, um Alimona, who is a matchmaker at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, who also helps with the episode. It is a little silly and if you if you cringe easily at silly humor, just quick warning up front, that's gonna happen in this episode, but you will learn about the evolution of matches, which is pretty fascinating stuff filled with lots of dangerous chemistry. So I hope you enjoy and I hope you had a happy and safe

Fourth of July weekend. Today we're going to talk about fire. It's somebody safe fire, no god, no. Um, ladies and gentlemen, I've been blessed with a special guest today. Would you please introduce herself to all these nice people. Well, I'm almona middler, and I'm a matchmaker that I didn't quite

understand what matchmaking entailed, so I'm quite good at starting fires. Yes, so um, for those who do not know, I have a sordid history with the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and it was there, I believe where my path first crossed with that of alamonas uh the village matchmaker. And um, I guess it's only fitting that for this episode I have a pyro enthusiast join us for the show. So, Alimona, thank you for being here. Hey, thank you for having me.

You look quite familiar. I can't quite put my matchtick on it, but yeah, you see a lot of faces at the festive. Well, I'm I'm sure there are a lot of I have one of those faces too, like you know, one of the ones that lots of people have. Um, because we let's get your Jonathan Strickland mask at the tech stuff store today. No, they're not really, They're okay, But we're gonna talk about stuff like matches, which I understand you consider yourself somewhat of an expert on which

I find perplexing. I am an expert on matches. It's it's a little wooden stick thing and then and then you you you you strike the end of it and and it in it, and then it goes boom, and then the pretty orange stuff comes out and it's very hot. It's odd to me that you would be so familiar with them, because the matches as you describe them, weren't available until the early nineteenth century, and if my math is correct, the renaissances before times of the nineteenth century,

my whole life has been a lie. Fair enough, all right, Well, Alimona, I'm glad you could be here because I'm going to explain to you the history of matches, and if you have things you want to say or questions, you want to ask, then we can, you know, really focus on that. And there's sometimes where I'm going to ask you a question just to see what you know about things, And when we find out the depth of your ignorance, I will then illuminate by explaining exactly what the reality of

the situation is. I really like the word illuminate, but I don't quite like the word ignorance. I think the man explaining part of the episode is just the guns. So we're gonna begin, as I said, with the history of matches. You know, you might think of it as the predecessor to the lighter. Uh, that's a lighter, lighter than what? Okay, right, what's a heavier? Is there a heavier? No? Okay, this is this is how this is gonna go us A lighter thing that produces flame over and over and

over again, and yeah, you would love them. And inesting thing is that the modern match and the modern lighter actually were developed around the same time. They were co developed, and around the same time. We would normally think the matches must have come much earlier, but modern matches rely very heavily on something you and I completely lack chemistry. So we're gonna talk about that. But we're going to start with matches. And really, when we talk about matches,

you gotta look all the way back to China. The country, not the type of dishes. I can see your mind working right in front of me, Alumona, I got left the way China sounds when you break it. Yeah, So the country of China, Uh, they began to experiment using sticks dipped in sulfur. And this was not the type of match that you would strike against a surface and

have it ignite. Instead, it was a way of lighting something and having it burn at a controlled rate so that you could transfer the fire from one place to another. For example, from say a roaring fire to a candle. You would want to be able to move that fire around. And as we all know, moving fire just with your hands is a bad idea because it's because it's hot. But it's very fun. Okay, all right, We're also going to stress to our listeners playing with fire is a

dangerous thing once you get past the tingling sensation. Okay, all right now, Alamona, really let's let's refocus here. So those matches don't really fit our modern description of the word, and they would not really play into the type of strike matches that we think of when we hear the word match. So instead you have to go all the way up to the seventeen century, So a bit late in the day for you, Alimona, I'd be an old woman diving. I might be as old as years old.

That's interesting. Yeah, I guess you would definitely adhere to the philosophy that's better to burn out than to fade away. Good one, thank you. So in the in the in the seventeenth century, there was this, uh, this German alchemist, hennig Brandt, thank you. So he was attempting to do what many alchemists were trying to do. Oh I knowed alchemist is that's like a scientist, not really uh, predecessor to science. I would argue closer, I would argue closer

to Professor Snape than a scientist. Yes, alchemy is all about the attempt to figure out ways to turn base metals or base materials into gold, which to this day perplexes me because Alamono, just just follow along with me here, all right, I'm going to explain to you the concept of supply and demand as well as that of value, right something. Oh boy, I'm glad I didn't say that. So gold people ascribe great value to gold. Right, Gold is valuable. It lets you buy stuff. If you amass

a lot of gold, you have wealth. Correct concept foreign to me, but yes, yes, so you understand the idea of wealth, even though you may never have possessed it yourself. Right, So, alchemists wanted to find a way to turn other types of stuff into gold. But if you could do that, if you could turn say lead into gold, then you would suddenly have a surplus of gold. And one of the things, in fact, the chief thing that makes gold

valuable is its scarcity. So if you've taken some thing that was valuable because it was scarce, and you made a whole bunch more of it, what do you think happens? Lots and lots of money? Is that right? Okay? All right, so you're you're you're about a step behind me. No, if you have too much of it, if you have a lot of of this gold that was valuable because of its scarcity, is no longer scarce, It is no longer valuable. Yes, it means that you would have way

too much of it. And yeah, up until the point where you had an abundance of gold on the market, in which case the value would plummet. So I never understood alchemy from that perspective. But um, let's get dig a little deeper, because boy, it gets way more weird than that. So one of the important advancements that made matches possible was the discovery of phosphorus. So phosphoruss it's it's a naturally occurring element, but usually we wouldn't. It's

usually bound up in other things. The less said about that, the better with you here, Alamona. But it's bound up with other things, and then if we can refine it, then we can use it as a component in things like matches. So hinnig Brand discovered how to isolate phosphorus. That's not what he was trying to do, but it is what he effectively ended up doing. Ah, he isolated phosphorus from urine. Yeah, yeah, I thought I would blind inside you. We're going to talk about pa science. Yeah,

that's right, you get it all out there, Almona. So what are you saying that when when I use the privy, I'm sitting on a gold mine, or rather a phosphorus mind. Hinnig, Well, you're certainly sitting on a phosphorus mine, hinnig Brand, but perhaps it was a gold mine. Here was his line of color. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what Brand was thinking. No, you're you're on the right track. He was sitting there thinking,

you know what, he's kind of yellow. Gold's yellow. Maybe P is yellow because there's gold in them, the RP. So he thought, how do I get the P away and keep the gold? Alchemists was so smart back then, I thought you'd think so. So here's what he did. Stop me if you heard this before he goes and he collects a lot of P, go ahead and ask me how much is a lot of P? How much is a lot of gallons of the stuff? How many friends did he have? It was just a Super Bowl weekend?

How many how many close friends did he have? More fewer by the end of it than he did at the beginning of it. I'm sure it's that I realize how few friends I have. I don't know who I could just walk up to and say, like, hey, would you mind Yeah this gallon jug and yes, it is exactly the way I need you to to do it. That's that's the what you're thinking, that's what I need. So he takes all this p and then of course he puts it into a giant fat because I mean,

what else are you gonna do with it? And then he boiled it. He boiled the P. I know you're thinking, I've smelled the privs on a hot day at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. That's what you're thinking, isn't it allen? Yeah, that's that's a that's a smell that will linger in your thoughts forever. Trust me. The first year I did it was still haven't forgotten. So soups gross. He boils it, which ends up evaporating a lot of the water out of the content of the urine, and what was left

behind was described as a surap substance. No do not. And then as the stuff was heating up, it started to glow red hot. As it cooled, it turned black and became hard. If your urine turns red and the black, maybe you should go see it something. Maybe. So he then takes some of the hardened black stuff and he mix mixes it with some of the red hot glowing stuff and ends up noticing that it caught fire. It just combusts, It bursts into flame, and he didn't realize

that what he had discovered was phosphorus. He actually thought, originally, and others did too, that he had come across the fabled Philosopher's stone. Um, not that kind of stone and urine. And eventually he referred to the stuff as cold fire because he knows that this phosphorus would glow in the dark. It wouldn't give off heat, but would glow in the dark. Weird. So if one were to refine this phosphorus further, you would eventually get to what's called white phosphorus. Sometimes it's

called yellow phosphorus because it's not really white white. Uh. This stuff is very dangerous because it ignites upon exposure to air. That sounds fun. Yeah, it's very much like you, So it wouldn't be for long it uh. So it ignites as soon as it encounters oxygen. What's happening is that the phosphorus molecules. Just think of pretty thoughts, Alimona. I'll be back with you in a second. Uh, quietly

think of pretty thoughts. Phosphorus molecules have very weak molecular bonds, uh, and oxygen when it encounters phosphorus breaks those molecular bonds, and then the phosphorus bonds with the oxygen in an exothermic reaction, which means it's a reaction that gives off a lot of heat, and because it gives off a lot of heat very quickly, uh, it ignites, and so you have the spontaneously combustible material, uh, white phosphorus. All right, So that would become important for matches. But we don't

get two matches just yet. We're still talking about the basic components that allow matches to become a thing. We will, however, talk about matches in just a moment. But before we do that, Almona, we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Please don't set them on fire, not even a little bit. Okay, we're just gonna take a break. Okay, we're back. The studio remarkably is still standing and not currently on fire. Alimona, you're still here. I know. It's

thank goodness we have all those blankets. Uh. So we're gonna move on. We just finished talking about pa science, which you were yah, I could tell. So we're gonna move on, and now we're going to talk about a person named Jean Chancel. Oh he sounds pretty it's the fancy dude, Jean Chancel found a way to create a match using a chemical reaction. And this is probably the most hardcore metal way of lighting a match I have ever heard about. So, okay, not that kind of all right,

you no, like like rock and roll metal. So he took a splint piece of wood and he coded it in a substance called potassium chlorate, and he also put in the same on the same mixture some sugar and some sticky gum. And the gum was to bind everything together. It was to hold the sugar and the potassium chlorate

together on the end of the stick. And then he dipped the end of this stick into a jar of sulfuric acid, and that caused the stick to ignite, which is, like I said, super hardcore when you're using sulfuric acid to light your matches. So here's what's going on. I want to explain to you the actual chemical process, the reaction that's happening, so that we understand how this technology works. So,

potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent. Now, Alumona, I know you know this from personal experience, hands on experience, but fire needs three things to be fire, and it's not magic. It's it's not love either. You want to give one more more, more shot, you can get maybe one of the three a spring day at the Georgia Renaissance Fest. Okay, none of those three things are necessary. No, it needs fuel, it needs heat, and it needs an oxidizer.

Typically the oxidizer for most fires that we encounter is the air oxygen oxygen as an oxidizer. Those three things are necessary. If you're missing any one of those three things, you cannot make fire. And if you have a fire, the fire will extinguish. So if you run out fuel, the fire goes out right. If you no longer have an oxidizer, the fire cannot burn anymore. If if the heat is removed from the fire, it will not continuously burn. It will the the the chemical reaction that is fire

will stop. So potassium chlorate is an effective oxidizing agent. The sugar is fuel. Uh. In fact, we all know sugar is fuel because if you ever had a lot of sugar like I suspect Alamona has had, you will be very energetic for at least a short while. And then potassium chlorate when it decomposes under heat, it releases molecular oxygen so thus you get the oxidizing effect there. All right, so you've got everything you need mixed up there. You've got the fuel and the oxidizer. There, you need

to have the heat to start the reaction. Here's where the sulfuric acid comes in. When you dip this mixture of sugar and UH and potassium chlorate together in the sulfuric acid, the acid actually acts as sort of a catalyst. It creates this exothermic chemical reaction. Again, exothermic means it's giving awful lot of heat. So now you've got the third part of that triangle. Right. You've got the fuel, you have the oxidizer, you have the heat. The match

catches on fire. But the only way it works, the only way it works is if you have a jar of sulfuric acid. So while this was effective, it was not UH something that a lot of people wanted because sulfuric acid is extremely reactive stuff, and if it touches organic material, it tends to char it not burn it like catch it on fire. It won't ignite, but it will char. Like if you just poured sulfuric acid on wood,

the wood would char from that. So you definitely don't want to get it on yourself because you will suffer terrible injuries like Phantom of the Opera level injuries. It's a reference that I guess you wouldn't get Alamona, but don't worry. I'll show it to you later. So yeah, So so this didn't This did not get widespread adoption

because it was not practical. It was effective, but not practical. Also, the ignition was usually pretty spectacular, so in other words, it wasn't like a small flame like or a small spark and then a flame. It was very bright, very loud, spontaneous combustion type flame. The stick goes boom, The stick goes boom, as you did, uh so eloquently put it earlier. Yes,

in this case, you were right. So this was an early example of using chemistry to ignit of fire as opposed to the old style of rubbing two sticks together kind of friction approach. Now, as I said, sulfuric acid is super duper dangerous all on its own, and this particular reaction was really dangerous as well. It also was very smelly. The smoke it would give off had a foul odor. So there are a lot of downsides to this particular approach. Let's move forward to eighteen twenty six.

Now we have an Englishman to talk about, Yes, someone exactly, one of your fellow Brits. This English chemist was named John Walker, and he was working on this problem two. I'm sorry, that's that's the English for you. So he wanted to pair chemicals together so those two chemicals could burst into flame with a substance like cardboard or wood that could burn more slowly, so you would get an

initial burst of flame with the chemicals that flame. That flame would then set fire to some sort of substance that could last longer. It would burn more slowly, and thus you could hold the other end as a handle. These are the components we need for a working match. We need something we can hold as a handle that's probably not on fire, yes, because we're touching it, and we have to have an end that is on fire or that can at least ignite, and then catch that

end on fire. So that was the whole idea here, and touching fire is bad, right. So he was experimenting with different chemical mixtures, but he accidentally dragged a stick that was coded in these different chemical mixtures against the hearth of his fireplace and discovered that just the friction of moving this chemical coated stick against the hearth generated enough heat to ignite the stick. So he invented a

strike anywhere match. I matched that because the chemicals that were on the end of it, we're in the right mixture. They just need to be heated up enough to hit ignition and then PuF burst into flame. So pretty exciting for him. He immediately saw a value of this discovery. He immediately saw the utility of it, but he also thought it was far too useful for him to make it secret. His friends were actually suggesting, hey, you should

patent that. A guy named Faraday, very important person in science. I don't expect you to know him. Fair Faraday? Okay, fair enough Faraday. Uh recommended to Walker, Hey you should patent that, and he said, no, nonsense, nonsense, I'm not going to patent it because it's far too interesting and important. People should be able to do with us whatever they want. And so that allowed a guy named Samuel Jones, another Englishman,

very exciting name, Sammy Jones of London. He took the exact same approach as Walker, and so he began to market his own strike anywhere matches based on the exact same formula that Walker had created, and he called them lucifers. Bringer of light. Yeah, a little little dark and and spooky, despite the fact that's also bringer of light. And Henry, the leader of the church, will protectors from the super I'm sure that excellent leader. It's a good Anglican reference.

So this began around eighty nine. And these matches again can be struck on any surface and would ignite. And they were still pretty spectacular matches, like the burst of flame was pretty bright and violent, also smelly. Again you identify with that and there, and they were more than a little bit dangerous. And other chemists over the time would play with different mixtures, and some of them would even use white phosphorus. Now you remember what I said

earlier about white phosphorus rights. This is the stuff that when you refine it down to white phosphorus, if it's exposed to the air, it will catch fire. That's what I want for Christmas in case, Well, they made matches out of the stuff, so you are actual matches that had white phosphorus, and the idea was that they had a slight coating on the outside so that it wasn't constantly exposed to air, and that striking it would break

that coating, exposed the white phosphorus to air. It would then have this exothermic reaction I was talking about that would ignite the end of the match stick and you would get this very bright, powerful uh light the match. However, it also meant that if the match heads were damaged at all and encountered the air, they would ignite spontaneously.

So typically you would have a container that was air tight to keep these matches inside, because you didn't want to risk the danger of the matches going off on their own. Because this is all about controlled experiences with fire, Alamona, not not just rampant fire, lit fire. Your your sympathy

is lie in different areas than my own. But h other chemist chemists would play with these different approaches trying to get it just right, and over time there was a decision to move away from white phosphorus matches, not just because they were dangerous. They were incredibly popular by the way. People loved the fact that you could strike these against anything. They were very convenient, but misunderstood certainly dangerous because also it was discovered that people working in

the manufacturing facilities. They were making these white phosphorus matches. We're starting to get sick, and they developed an illness that became known. And I am not making this up as Fossey jaw. Yeah, would you like to know the symptoms or you want to take a guess? I think that was my grandmother's name, Old Lady false Jaw. I was acting you to say you would be wearing a bowler hat and doing jazz hands and wearing a black unitard. I don't understand that it's fair. That's a that's a

Fossey joke. No. Actually, this was a truly terrible, terrible disease, and it was disfiguring disease. So the exposure to phosphorus vapor would cause the bone of the lower jaw to dissolve slowly to the point where people had completely would have to have their lower jaws removed because if they didn't, then the the illness would progress to the point where they would experience oregon failure and then die. So this

is what we call a bad thing. And they would lose teeth throughout the process, they'd lose bone mass and their jaws. Their jaws would actually give off a greenish white light in the dark, they would actually glow a bit from all the phosphor that they were or fosse for us that they were absorbing. So pretty terrifying stuff. Now, at the time that this was happening, it was during the Industrial Revolution, which again Alimona, it's ahead of your time.

But when the peasants talk about revolution, in this case, the peasants also were uh in trouble during the Industrial Revolution because they were being exploited terribly. So this was a time of great industry where you have these huge manufacturing facilities that are being built and labor is needed, but labor is also plentiful. There are a lot of people who are no longer farmers there in there in search for work, so they all start looking for places

where they can get employment. They start joining different facilities, including matchmaking facilities. A lot of young women did this. I could work that these were the women who were suffering from fossey jaw Alimona. These are not not women that I'm just saying, I'd be qualified. All From the industrialist point of view, these workers were disposable because if someone got sick or died or whatever, there were a

hundred others who were just desperate for a job. So this was a terrible situation where people were being exploited and they were getting sick, and it all got to the point where the women organized what was called the Great Match Girls Strike. Was the pun intended? It's an excellent question, but it really was like a union strike. Uh. They weren't striking matches. I understand that. It's just you know, sometimes a pun, a really good pun, just falls into it.

This time it is an unintentional pun. Uh. So all four women walked out of a manufacturing company, a matchmaking company called Bryant and May in protest of conditions. Eventually they were able to win some protection, although a lot of the white phosphorus stuff was still largely ignored because they were so popular. There was an alternative that I'm going to talk about in the second to white phosphorus, but nobody wanted those. They wanted the ones you could

strike anywhere. Well, in nineteen o six there was an organization, a group gathering called the International Burn Convention that passed prohibitions on white phosphorus matches, and the industry as a whole migrated away from them. It took a few more years they kept on doing it for a little while longer, and then eventually they stopped, and thus we saw a drastic improvement in conditions for workers who were making matches.

But yeah, it was a pretty ironically dark time when you look at the conditions that people had to endure in order to make these. Now, on the other hand, the demand for matches at this time was astounding because you're talking about a moment in history where people had access to things that would allow them to generate light after the sun went down. Now, Alamonia, you know that when the sun goes down, it's just time to go to bed because you can't see nothing that well, there was.

There was at one time where I got a little excited and then yeah, well apart from like conflagrations, you don't really see village boom. It was all bright and everyone was happy. That That explains why we went from Willy Nilly on the wash Over to Newcastle. There was actually a relocation of the Georgia in the Suncestival. All of that is true. By the way, you can all serve the relocation part. I'm not so certain about the yeah that part. So this was a change, a social change.

Now we're getting into a point where people had opportunity to have lights in their own homes, whether they were you know, lanterns that have been around for ages, but now it was easier to light them because you had matches, or it was even stuff like gas lamps that were starting to be deployed in certain cities. So that meant that matches were really sought after, so there was a

heavy market for them. Fortunately, there were some other smarty pants who were coming up with ideas that were alternatives to this white phosphorus approach. And I'll talk about that more in just a second, but first let's take another quick break. All right, Alimona, you're still following me right somewhere. I got a little bit lost along the path, and here you're looking for I heard it was a nice person named the Quister walking around. Oh yeah, that's a

different show. I think he dresses like me a bit. Okay, yeah, all right, So if you want to know who Alimona is talking about with the Quister, you need to listen to the podcast Ridiculous History, where the Quister shows up and occasionally and in episodes and torments, the hosts of that show. The hosts that show are are Ben Bolan and Noel Brown. I'm commenting you match made in so similar that it's actually making me regret quisters segments at

this point. Alright, So, in the mid to late nineteenth century, different inventors were using stuff like lead ox side and potassium chlorate to kind of tweak matches. They were trying to make the matches burn without generating as much smelly smoke, like because he's still smelled really bad. They're very sulfuric um. They were trying to find ways so that they were quieter because they were very loud when you were striking these matches the early ones, and with a more controlled burn.

There was an Austrian scientist named Anton von Schrutter who yes, yes, and he used red phosphorus instead of white phosphorus, and he did that in to create a more stable match, one that would not be prone to spontaneous combustion. So, okay, well you're sad, but most people meant that if you were to accidentally scratch the end of the match head, you didn't have to worry about it bursting into flame. And this is what paved the way to the modern

safety match. So a safety match is a very clever invention in which the ingredients needed for combustion are not all contained within the match head itself, so you divide them. You put some of the ingredients on the match head, but you put the other ingredients on the striking surface

that you're going to use to ignite the match. And this is how you make it safe, because it's not gonna even if you rub two matches together, they're lacking the ingredient that will allow them to combust, so you don't have to worry about them like jostling around and then setting themselves on fire. Uh So in a modern matchbook, you can think of one half of the ingredients is being a the match stick. The other half are on that little strip that you use when you strike the

match and ignite it. And this is why, uh you don't have to, you know, freak out about those matches. Just like hitting the ground or something, they'll never ignite unless it just happens to be hot enough to hit their ignition temperature, because that will still cause them to ignite.

I mean, I'm sure if you've ever certainly feels like it gets hot enough for that, But if you ever bring like an unlit match close to a flame, you'll see that at some point it will burst into flame itself because you will have heated the end of that match to its ignition point. But don't do that. It's dangerous. Don't listen. It's not al Amona's show, it's my show. And it's also why um these matches you can't replicate that cool move you might see and you won't know this, Alumona.

But in a movie where someone like strikes a match against like the bottom of their shoe or a brick, and it just burst in the flame and then they light something cool with it and they shake the match stick out. You can't do that with safety matches unless you happen to have coated the bottom of your shoe with the other component needed to create combustion, which I guess you could do if you really wanted to. Uh.

And there still are non safety matches. They're still matches that will ignite if you strike them against any surface. You can still buy them. They are not made out of white phosphorus anymore. They're made off of other materials, but they still do the same thing, and that you can strike them against any surface and they will ignite. UH. If they as long as the friction allows them to

reach their ignition temperature. As for modern safety matches, they tend to have potassium chlorate as well as an oxidizing agent, or as the oxidizing agent, I should say, And they have antimately sulfide, which sounds like a relative of yours and little right, And then the striking surface would have the coating of red phosphorus, So the red phosphorus is actually on whatever surface you're supposed to strike the match on, and so bringing them together and creating friction is enough

to light the little suckers. All right, Well, I'm gonna do another episode where I'm gonna talk more about lighters, but I want to give you a little bit of of a preview of that, Alimona, because this is you seem to be fascinated by the concept of a lighter. So I'm going to talk about the earliest thing that people refer to as a lighter, and that's going to be the close of this episode. So lighters, like I said earlier, we're being developed around the same time that

matches were. It's not like we got matches right and then we moved on to lighters. They were independent lines of invention. And innovation. So the first lighter, most people agree, was made by a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Dobert Reiner. Great name, he wins, he wins the names. Yeah, so he a numerous contributions to chemistry. He it's not just the guy who made the first lighter. He did lots of stuff. But for our purposes, the thing we want to look at is this later that he made the

double Reiner lamp, and this was an ingenious invention. It is also tricky to describe without pictures, but I'm gonna try and do it in Alimona. Honestly, the only way I can read books just through the pictures. Okay, well, I'm going to paint you a word picture with my words. But if you have questions, like honestly, if you have trouble imagining what I'm saying, tell me, because that would tell me. Oh, I should explain this a different way so that the listeners at home also understand it. So

you're gonna play a truly valuable service here. You're welcome. Okay, well just take it seriously. Here we go. Now, first we're gonna start imagining that you have a glass jar and you have a lid that would fit on top of that glass jar. Okay, so that's what we're starting from. The glass jar has sulfuric acid in it. That's that stuff I was talking about earlier. Super reactive. It can char you know, skin and would uh and you definitely don't want to touch it. So anyway, you've got this

jar of sulfuric acid. Now imagine that that you've taken the lid off of this jar and you attached to the lid a cylinder of glass. Okay, it's open at either end, except that you've glued one end to the bottom side of the lid of the jar, all right, And now imagine that you have poked a hole in the top of the lid on the other side of that open end of the cylinder, and you put a valve there, which only allows air to pass through if

the valve is open, but it's closed. Now, this means that if you were to put the lid on the jar, you would be pushing that cylin are down through the sulfuric acid in the jar. And because the air is trapped inside the cylinder, it will push the sulfuric acid out of the way. It will displace it, So the level of sulfuric acid will rise a bit in the jar. The cylinder inside will remain just full of air. The

sulfuric acid can't come up in there. If you're having trouble imagining this, just imagine what happens if you take a straw, like a drinking straw, and you put your finger over the top of the drinking straw and then you put it down into liquid. The liquid doesn't go up in the straw because the air pressure inside the straw keeps it out. All right, good, I'm glad that we're on the same page. Okay, So you've got this cylinder in it. It keeps the sulfuric acid out because

it's air tight at the moment, because the valve is shut. Now, also imagine that dangling in the center of the cylinder. So you've you've attached some form of line on the underside of the lid as well. At where the cylinder, the top of the cylinder is dangling. Inside the cylinder is a piece of zinc. Okay, the metal zinc. It is attached to a tether. It's dangling in the middle

of this cylinder. Still, there's nothing touching anything else right, the sulfuric acid isn't coming into contact with anything inside the cylinder, all right. Now, imagine you open the valve on the top of the lid. So now you've created away for the air inside the cylinder to escape. The pressure from the sulfuric acid will push against the air inside that cylinder. It will make some of that air escape. The sulfuric acid will start to come into where the

cylinder is and actually make contact with the zinc. You close off the valveu you shut the valve. Valve shut. Now the sulfuric acid is going to react with that zinc, and that reaction gives off hydrogen gas. So little bubbles will form on this zinc, and the bubbles will bubble up into the interior of the cylinder. And because the valve is shut, the bubbles have nowhere to go. The

bubbles start building up. That starts to push the sulfuric acid back out again because you're increasing the pressure inside the cylinder. But now it's not air, just regular air that's in that cylinder. Now it's hydrogen gas. So you've got a cylinder filled with hydrogen gas. If you open up that valve again, you'll release hydrogen gas. Okay, So

that's the basic part of this lamp. The next part was another component on top of the lid, the top side, not the side that's inside the jar, that holds a what they called a platinum sponge. It was a porous piece of platinum and it's position in such a way to be directly across from the valve where the hydrogen can come out. All right, So when you open up the valve, hydrogen shoots out from the air pressure and

it goes across and hits this platinum sponge. When platinum is in the s sense of hydrogen and oxygen, it creates a chemical reaction that's exothermic, which means it gives off heat. Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable. That I'm sure you would. Does the phrase oh the humanity mean anything to you. That's what everyone screamed when I when it was really dark that one night to night, And yeah, okay,

well then you're totally on board. So this means that the hydrogen gas catches fire and you've got a lighter because the hydrogen from the cylinder has come out, it's hit that platinum sponge. The platinum sponge has that exothermic catalyzes an exothermic reaction that then ignites the hydrogen gas that's still coming out through the valve. As long as the valve is open, this is still going, but hydrogen

flames are essentially invisible. You can't really see them. However, if you were to put anything within that that section where the valve is open, it would catch fire. So if you put a match in there, it would make the match catch on fire because even though it's invisible, it's flaming. It actually is happening. It's it's burning at that moment, so you can use it to light you know, matches or candles or whatever. Alright, and then when you would close the valve, the flame would go out because

there's no more fuel coming out. And as long as the zinc is still in contact with the sulfuric acid, it will continue to generate more hydrogen gas. And eventually one of two things will happen. It'll either generate enough hydrogen gas so that the gas has pushed the sulfuric acid down to a level where it's no longer in contact with the zinc, because you know, you've built up the air pressure, it's pushed it's like blowing into a straw.

It's pushed down. The liquid um or the zinc will get consumed by the sulfuric acid and it will stop because there's nothing for the sulfuric acid to dissolve anymore, So you won't you won't be generating anymore hydrogen. You'll have to replace the zinc um. Those are the two outcomes. So it was really cool because this lighter worked purely on chemistry. There was no striking, there was no sparks,

there was nothing that had to ignite a fuel. It was purely by generating this hydrogen gas, shooting it at platinum, having that create the chemical reaction and then boom, you've got a flame as long as that valve is open. It was ingenious. It was also incredibly dangerous because it was a vat of sulfuric acid um. So it was not something that would become widely adopted or universally adopted.

But it is a phenomenal invention and there are um forgive me, Alimona, there are videos on YouTube that show these things working. Yeah, you just sit there and think about fiery stuff, but there are videos on YouTube if you want to look this up. They are really fascinating and you can even see them in action and understand better the mechanisms I'm talking about that make this lighter possible. Again, that's a Dobba Reiner lamp, so you should check those

out because they are really cool. So it does not surprise me in the slightest well, um alamona uh that is I thank you. You have been the most unique guest I've ever had on tech Stuff and I once had strong bad in here. Oh he sounds yeah. He gave me a sign off even it was pretty amazing. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I actually followed that up with an episode about lighters to talk about how they work and the physics and mechanics behind them. So if you want to learn more about those, you can

look through the archives of tech Stuff. It was in you know, early February of when we published that one as well, and h later this week we'll have some new episodes inspired by listeners who have reached out to me. If you would like to reach out and give me suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, the best way to do that is over on Twitter and the handle for our show is Text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to You again really

soon YEA. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.