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

Where did the inspiration for the invention for the modern match strike?

Bonus points for any names and the dates.

No googling, wikipedia etc.

There are klaxons - naturally - so be bold; preferably interesting; never obvious.

Do you mean the safty match or the S Vesta type

I would imagine a stone would be a starting point!

My immediate thought, for inspiration would be lightening, followed by the flintlock pistol.

Striker hits pan with gunpowder... WHOOSH!

Liquify powder, dip in stick. Leave to dry then strike.

Somewhere in my two grey cells I know this, from Blue Peter, believe it or not. To do wit Lucifers and little match girls! I know it was a toxic and dangerous job including the use of sulpher and saltpetre.

MMF

Neither.

Nothing to do with flintlock pistols; the contents were never divulged though later concoction were known and patented.

Match girls and Lucifer all feature in match history but I'm after the location of the invention.

Is that a reply to Bob, myself or both?

MMF

Ignore!

MMF

Glad that's settled then.

On 29th February 1592, Johann Sebastian Matchstick invents little pieces of wood whose end (one end, at least) is coated with a little bit of sulphur. He quickly found amusing uses for these, such as drawing people who look like them http://xkcd.com/532/, or make logic puzzles http://www.puzzlemaster.ca/puzzles/images/matchstick_puzzles.gif. Unfortunately it appeared that they didn't have any practical applications.

One hundred years later exactly, on 29th February 1692, the Corsican Napoleon Matchboxe, during a small pox epidemic, invents a small box with gritty paper on the side. His main objective was to increase gritty paper consumption, because he was a gritty paper salesman and business wasn't so good at that time. These quickly become diverted by businesses worldwide, seeing in them an easy opportunity for cheap advertisement http://www.culture-buzz.fr/IMG/jpg/hot3-2.jpg. Parents welcome the opportunity to make their children do something constructive with their free time http://img.deco.fr/photo/01A7010F02028530.jpg

However, it was really in 1845 that a little Danish match-seller made an encounter which would change the face of the Earth, when an American ornithologist approached her:
Ornithologist: Pardon me, do you have a lighter?
Match seller: I have matches.
Ornithologist: Better still.
Match seller: Until they go wrong.
It is a very bemused ornithologist who bought the matches and a matchbox featuring his favourite baseball team. (He was bemused because he still coldn't light his cigarette without a lighter.) He later mistakenly fell through a wormhole and landed back in early stone age, when he was mugged by a paleolithic robbers, who, in a spirit of investigation and curiosity, struck the sulphur end of the matchstick on the gritty side on the matchbox, therefore not only discovering fire, but also inventing the modern match strike.

(Incidentally, if the gregorian calendar was made to go backwards in time, it could be seen that this discovery would also have happened on a 29th of February )

A splendid effort!

No.

Somewhere in the Ottoman empire?

Nope

*bump*

is this like a bird strike, but with matches? i.e. when a cricket match brings down a plane, and the ntsb goes to lords cricket ground for clues?

Nope.

Lords is in London - and the type of match I'm after definitely wasn't invented there!

Do you all need a clue?

Original matches produced a (fatal) condition called phossy jaw because the matches were moistened in the mouth, and the phosporous poisoned people.

William Booth formed a match company making matches that didn't use phospherous, Bryant's had said that people wouldn't pay the extra cost - they were wrong.

I think we need the clue

match strikes were made from swans bills, hence the famous match, swan vesta

>>I think we need a clue<<

Damn. I'll have to think of one then.....

QI +6 for 'phossy jaw'

yeesh..