Match
The match was invented in China more than 1,500 years ago. In AD 577, when China was in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the Northern Zhou and Southern Chen joined forces to attack the city of Ye, capital of the Northern Qi. The long besiege rendered the imperial palace of
Northern Qi in dire need of supplies, especially something to build a fire. Then the women in the palace invented a kindler, named)Ca zhu. Fa zhu was a piece of wood, dipped in melted sulfur and then dried. Rubbed against a hard board for several times, thefa zhu would give out flame. Tao Gu, a writer of the Song Dynasty, wrote about another igniter named huo cun in one of his essays.
Huo cun was also a piece of wood soaked with melted sulfur, but it was not easy to ignite by friction. Later people applied phosphor to huo cun, making it easy to ignite.
Outside China, it was in the 16th century that an igniter similar tofa zhu and huo cun was made. The modern match was invented by the British, and later improved by the Swedish to become the safe match, which must be scratched against a surface covered with phosphor to ignite. The match is also called yang huo (foreign fire) in some Chinese dialect, but in fact the first match was invented in China more than a thousand years ago. |
