I’m going with the sloth example. As I recall, they can’t even stand upright, let alone jump, because their claws curve underneath their bodies.
Good cites, Mauve Dog. It looks like unless you want to count flintlock pistols as lighters, matches definitely came first. Personally, I think a pistol is a very different thing than a lighter. Totally different uses, even if they were based on the same mechanism.
And Commander Fortune, holy crap! I’m impressed. An eyewitness account, and it was even entertaining!
I’m still undecided on walri. Does flopping off a cliff into the water count? I guess not, if we’re going to disallow falling out of trees. As for bats, I think they jump. They use their four legs to get (and stay) off the ground, after all. Even if you ignore flying, they must leap a little to take off.
Actually, there was a gadget that looked like a pistol with no barrel. Instead it had a brass pan which one put tow (flax fibers) in. Pull the trigger and the flint strikes a steel, throws sparks on the tow, and you got fire. Don’t have dates, but I think I saw it in a book on Civil War antiques.
This is a reply I just received from Tony Hyman. Since it has been 5 months since I sent off an e-mail inquiry, I forget where I got his name, but I think that he is a well-known collector of lighters. It seems that I read his review of a book on lightrers and their history, and the review made him seem like a person who would have knowledge.
In any event, here is his reply
I suggest that the useful cite here is the whale oil ones from the 1830’s. Which would put it about the time of the modern match. What he neglected to provide, of course, is the method of lighting the whale oil lighter. If by flint or some such, that would make it a lighter.