Wooden Matches go on sale

BOOK COUNTY DURHAM HOTELS

Wooden Matches go on sale

Stockton on Tees, County Durham The 7th of April 1827 AD

History is littered with those who failed to cash in on their inventions: the paper-clip rights sold for next to nothing; likewise the safety-pin. But perhaps the most striking case (ho-ho) where an inventor didn’t think it worthwhile to patent his creation was that of Stockton-on-Tees druggist and amateur chemist John Walker. Imagine what a tiny percentage of every box of matches sold for just a year would have been worth.
Walker had been apprenticed to a surgeon in his home town before training in York and Durham with pharmacists, then ran a chemist’s shop on Stockton’s High Street. He was of an enquiring mind, and interested in chemistry of the bang and flash variety, and in 1827 came up with the idea for what he termed a Congreve, referring to the rockets developed less than 20 years previously. These were the first friction matches, made by drying a chemical mixture on a small piece of wood, the mixture igniting when struck against a suitable surface. The first sale of the product was on April 7 1827, and we even know the name of the customer, a local solicitor called Hixon.

More famous dates here

8618 views since 7th April 2010

Brit Quote:
I then realized my appearance was a bit odd. My right leg was no longer with me. It had caught somewhere in the top of the cockpit as I tried to leave my Spitfire. - Douglas Bader
More Quotes

On this day:
Benjamin Franklin Arrives in London - 1724, First Bomb Dropped on English Soil - 1914
More dates from British history

click here to view all the British counties

County Pages