The Romance of Modern Chemistry

HOW FIRE IS MADE at this game, and we moderns would probably require much more than two minutes to produce fire with these primitive appliances. Another elementary way of making fire is to strike flint and steel together, allowing the sparks which are thrown off to fall among some easily-ignited material such as tinder. This latter substance consists of the element carbon in a finely-divided condition, and is obtained by charring fragments of linen. The tinder, although it is not actually inflamed by a spark, glows with sufficient heat to ignite sulphur-tipped wooden splints—“spunks,” as they used to be called. The flint and steel method of obtaining fire for domestic and other purposes was known to the Greeks and Romans, and was the one commonly in use in most countries up to the end of the eighteenth century. Even the inhabitants of such an out-of-the-way place as Tierra del Fuego have for centuries been accustomed to get fire in this way, only instead of steel they used pyrites— a mineral compound of iron and sulphur. It appears, in fact, that this mineral got its name from the use which was originally made of it in this way. Both flint and pyrites received the name of “fire-stone’1 (Greek TTVpiT^S). Another curious device which may be employed in making fire depends on the fact that if air is suddenly compressed, heat is produced. A simple instrument based on this principle and known as a “fire-syringe” or a “pneumatic tinder-box” is to be found in any list of scientific apparatus. It consists of a glass tube fitted at both ends with brass caps, through one of which moves a rod with piston attached. If a piece of tinder is put in the bottom end of the tube, and the 120