h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm doing some research on this, can someone help me out?

What method did 16th century French people use?

Thanks.

jason

Step 1: Find some fire. Try looking in the hearth.
Step 2: Insert one end of a dry stick or splint into fire and wait for it to catch fire.
Step 3: Use lighted stick/splint to light your candle.

Alternatively, if you've lit one candle/rush light this is a perfect source for lighting others.

Once you have a fire you have the source of producing excellent tinder. Clean wool or cotton, dried punk, fungi and various other rotten organic stuff. All you had to do was keep it dry.

However by the 15th century, gunpowder was widely available. A small amount of this in your tinder was all that you'd need for a passable match. If it was mounted on a small pan under a flint striker it would equate to modern lighters.

A lighter sans the gas can still be used as a torch in an emergency in this nuclear age. No doubt some bright spark had the same idea when he wanted to go to the loo in the good old days.

Flint and steel were used to start a spark in tinder (bits of fiber, lint, moss, crumbled bark, etc). The spark was then carefully coaxed to a flame and the flame transfered to a punk (like you use to light fireworks). A coal could be carried in a gourd partially stuffed with moss, the coal inserted, and then covered with more moss. In some instances a corn husk or "shuck" was lit from a fire to use as a light to go from one place to another. Hence the outdated phrase "light a shuck" means to prepare to leave one house for another.