How it began
In 1844 the Swedish chemist Gustaf Erik Pasch separated the components needed for ignition between the box and the match stick, and the first safety match was patented on October 30, 1844. Johan Edvard Lundström developed Pasch's idea further and patented his version in 1852. He and his younger brother Carl Frans, an entrepreneur, had opened a match factory in Jönköping in 1844 and 1845, and manufacturing of safety matches began there in 1853.
Before it existed
Friction matches appeared in the 19th century once it was found that certain chemicals ignite when rubbed. Early matches used white, also called yellow, phosphorus in the head. It was poisonous, the matches could ignite by themselves, and factory workers developed phosphorus poisoning.
How it works
Pasch removed the white phosphorus from the match and put red phosphorus, which is less flammable, into a striking surface on the outside of the box. The Jönköping match head was made of stibnite, gum, starch and potassium chlorate on a stick of aspen dipped in sulfur, and later in wax or paraffin. The match lights only when the head is rubbed against the phosphorus surface. The Lundström brothers also introduced the matchbox with an inner drawer and an outer sleeve whose sides carry the striking surface.
How it spread
The Jönköping matches were a success at the 1855 World Expo in Paris, where the brothers received a silver medal for making matches without workers developing phosphorus poisoning. Safety matches were expensive to produce and became known throughout the world only from 1868. Alexander Lagerman, who joined the factory in 1870, built machines to make and fill boxes, and in 1892 a complete automated match machine. The factory went from about 4,000 boxes a year at the start to more than seven million a year by 1896.
What lasted
Pasch, Lundström and Lagerman laid the foundations of the Swedish match industry, which consolidated in the early 20th century into Svenska Tändsticksaktiebolaget, later Swedish Match. The inner box and outer sleeve design is still in use. Safety matches are still called Swedish matches in several languages, such as allumettes suédoises in French and Schwedenhölzer in German.
