Marc Charles Sauria (25 April 1812 – 22 August 1895)
JanineTissot.fdaf.org (in French) was a French chemist credited for inventing

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ear ...

-based

match A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matc ...

es in 1830–1831. Several events are believed to have led Sauria to his discovery, including the hydrogen lighter introduced in 1827 by

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (, , ; 6 December 1778 – 9 May 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (with Alexander von Humboldt), for two laws ...

and the demonstration by his chemistry professor Nicolet where a powder mixture of

potassium chlorate Potassium chlorate is a compound containing potassium, chlorine and oxygen, with the molecular formula KClO3. In its pure form, it is a white crystalline substance. After sodium chlorate, it is the second most common chlorate in industrial use. It ...

and

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

was detonated by a blow. During a long series of experiments, Sauria went on to add white

that helped ignite the mixture by friction. He finalized the invention by adding

gum arabic Gum arabic, also known as gum sudani, acacia gum, Arabic gum, gum acacia, acacia, Senegal gum, Indian gum, and by other names, is a natural gum originally consisting of the hardened sap of two species of the '' Acacia'' tree, ''Senegalia sen ...

to hold the powders together, and dipping pieces of wood into it. Sauria was a poor student at the time; however, Nicolet communicated his invention to German industrialist Friedrich Kammerer who had patented it and used it in mass production of matches. The British chemist John Walker had introduced a very similar match some five years earlier, where he used

antimony sulfide Antimony sulfide may refer to either of two compounds of antimony and sulfur: *Antimony trisulfide, Sb2S3 *Antimony pentasulfide Antimony pentasulfide is an inorganic compound of antimony and sulfur, also known as antimony red. It is a nonstoichi ...

instead of white phosphorus. However, the phosphorus matches became more popular, mostly because of the reduced smell of sulfur, and quickly replaced those made by Walker. Around the time of Sauria's death, some 3 trillion of white phosphorus matches per year were produced worldwide. However, white phosphorus was soon proven to be toxic and banned by the international

Berne Convention The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of leg ...

in 1906.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sauria, Charles 1812 births 1895 deaths 19th-century French chemists 19th-century French inventors