John Walker was a chemist from Stockton - on - Tees in England. In 1926 he invented a match by quite chance. He was working in his laboratory, mixing a chemical mixture of potash and antimony with a small wood. Then he struck by the small wood about the stoned floor he wanted to put away a small lump which created on its end. All of a sudden a flame flashed. Walker showed everybody this an interesting thing but he didn’t have it patented.

Samuel Jones so saw this and he started to work on commercial use of this news immediately. And so a year after this event the first matches were sold. Their small heads were consisted of a mixture of chlorate potassium and sulphide antinomies, rubber  and starch. They were packed for one hundred in a box  (originally in carton box, later of thin wooden veneer) called Devil. Their use was so simply that they not only put away a flint and steel finally, but they so contributed to extend smoking. But there was a problem: the matches reeked so strong and they banged through lighting like small fireworks. From these reasons the boxes had to be signatured with warning about it that they are harmful to healthy. . .

And so in 1830 the French chemist Charles Sauria changed the mixture of matches he discovered a white phosphor. However he put away the sting but there was "forgotten" that the white phosphor just could be deadly poisonous. There was this poison enough to kill one person in one box. Many people learned it on their healthy and suicides used it in a perfect way.

Swedish man Johan Lundström invented safety matches in 1855. They become to burn only if you strike about a special surf, because one chemical substance needs to burn was in the head of the match and the other was in the strike area. The safety matches started to produce the some year in Sweden and also in England.

The packed like a small book some cartoon desks holding the row of small matches was invented by American Joshua Pusey in 1896 and it was performed at the market firstly in 1896.

Today’s matches are formed with thin woods (spruce, poplar, aspen) or cartoon (recycling) sticks fulfilled by paraffin and provided so called a small head with the mixture of oxidation substance and binders and fulfil substances. They light by stirring with a head about the wall of box, which is coated with the mixture of phosphor (not poisonous), milling glass and fulfil substances and a paste.

(taken over from http://www.solo.cz/sirkarna/index.html)