So how did someone light the lamps (in the Old North Church or elsewhere) in (say) 1775? Matches or some sort of friction and flint lighter?
(It is heck when my mind wanders.)
Probably a splint, spill or taper, lit from an existing lamp or fire, or lit with flint and tinder.
Really? Why? Wasn’t some sort of cigarette lighter fairly easy to make in the age before cigarettes? They had flint-lock guns after all. What is the chemistry of matches anyway?
There were such things - they were called tinderboxes, but they weren’t terribly convenient to use for lighting lots of small things like a church full of candles.
In the case of churches, there may have been candles or lamps burning somewhere in the building all the time - so it’s easier to take a light from that using a taper or another lamp or candle. In the case of dwellings, there would very often be a fire in the hearth anyway (for cooking), so the light could be taken from that.
Lighting a fire with flint and tinder or other pre-match methods is less convenient than taking a light from an existing fire.
A simple way to make matches was to fix a small lump of phosphorus to the end of a stick. Unfortunately white phosphorus is not something you want to be around. Another way was to coat the end of the stick with something that burst into flame when dipped in concentrated acid. This again is not necessarily something you will want to do every day. As for the flintlock, you may remember that in a cigarette lighter the spray of sparks ignites either a small jet of butane gas or a wick soaked in light petroleum spirit - it’s the vapour that catches fire. Otherwise, like in the flintlock, you need a small quantity of gunpowder. If you don’t have anything as inflammable then you need to direct your sparks at something which will smoulder and can be blown into flame. Many people use the word “tinderbox” for this.
A tinderbox was satisfactory for a mighty long time before chemistry and manufacturing caught up to the level necessary for lighters and matches. Phosphorus wasn’t isolated at all until the mid 1660s and the safer allotrope “red phosphorus” was a couple of centuries behind.
What they didn’t have was the fuel to put inside the lighter, nor the refineries to produce it.
Matches as we know them today were widely available by the time of the American Civil War, IIRC, and were often called “lucifers.”
My family (not me) does American Rev. War re-enactments. One time I asked one guy what a certain device was on his uniform. It was a small brass canister, with a piece of rope protruding from it. He responded that he was portraying a grenadier, and that was (I forget the exact term) a “match.” Basically, a slow-burning fuse he would use when he needed to light/ignite something. I believe fusilliers would also use them to light cannons.
Here’s a pic (scroll down).
(Man - I can’t believe my family’s geeky re-enacting may have actually have been of some use to me!)
In an age where fires were the commonest form of light and heat, it would be no big deal to obtain a light from some nearby glowing ember or candle. In one of Sherlock Holmes’ stories, he observes from the pipe that the owner was in the habit of lighting it from gas jets (used for illumination) – and this in an age that had matches.
Have you ever struck a light from tinder and flint? I’ve still got my Boy Scout kit. It’s not trivial if you don’t do it all the time, and it’s much more suited to starting a sizeable fire than to getting a convenient small flame. You could do it, but unless you’re an addicted smoker far from hearths, lights, and other smokers, I don’t think you’d use it to light your pipe.
Another thing to consider – cigarettes were almost unknown in 1775, and cigars weren’t common. People mostly smoked pipes.
As mentioned, self-striking matches weren’t invented until the 19th century. There were sulfur-infused splints used for transferring flame, but tey had to be lit from an existing fire.
As for phosphorus – as noted, white phosphorus was dangerous, and the manufacture of matches from it also produced a truly disgusting condition called “phossy jaw” in the workers, which caused the jaw and teeth to deteriorate. It’s still not clear to me what the mechanism was, or if it’s clear to anyone. It wasn’t until a safer process was developed that match-making really took off.
I missed entirely the lack of petroleum as a fuel for a cigarette lighter. Sometimes, I just miss the obvious. Thank you all.
Hmmm, I think there would have been other suitable things in the absence of petroleum though - turpentine, for one - which has been around for a long time.