Matches

                            In 1825 Walker,  a 44-years old chemist from the English town of Stockton-on-Tees, was busy making a"lighting mixture" of antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate for use with a flint and steel. When he accidentally rubbed some of the mixture against his hearthstone, he discovered that it lit spontaneously. He could light the friction matches he developed from this discovery by drawing them through a piece of folded sand paper. Walker's invention, sold only locally, was never patented. It was Samue Jones who copied and patented the matches in 1828 under the trade name ucifer. The invention of the modern friction match is attributed to Sir Issac Holden of Keighley, Yorkshire; in 1829he produced a match of phosphorous and sulphur that, being more effcient than Walker's superseded it by 1833.