Matches

UNESCO Courier, Oct, 1988

The first version of a match was invented in the year 577 AD by impoverished court ladies during a military siege, in the short-lived Chinese kingdom of the Northern Qi. Hard-pressed during the siege, they must have been so short of tinder that they could otherwise not start fires for cooking or heating.

Early matches were made with sulphur. A description is found in a book entitled Records o the Unworldly and tbe Strange written about 950 by Tao Gu:

If there occurs an emergency at night it may take some time to make a light to light a lamp. But aningenious man devised the system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulphur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame. One gets a little flame like an ear of corn. This marvellous thing was formerly called a 'light-bringing slave', but afterwards when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to 'fire inch-stick'."

There is no evidence of matches in Europe before 1530. Matches could easily have been brought to Europe by one of the Europeans travelling to China at the same time of Marco Polo, since we know for certain that they were being sold in the street markets of Hangzhou in the year 1270 or thereabouts.