John Walker, a dapper little man, "with a merry smile, a facetious wit, wearing usually, a brown tail-coat, knee-breeches, Great grey stockings, white cravat, and tall beaver hat."
He had been apprenticed to a surgeon but, because he disliked dabbling in blood, he turned to chemicals.
One day he sold to a solicitor customer, John Hixon, a novelty light, a bundle of pasteboard match "sticks" in a round to "pillar-box" container with a piece of folded sandpaper enclosed.
You inserted the end of the match in the sandpaper, gripped the sandpaper-and it was alight.
One shilling a hundred he charged Hixon for the sticks, and two old pennies for the container.

It seems that he got the idea of mixing chlorate of potash, sulphide of antimony and gum from a local sportsman named Vollum, who from time to time ordered a mixture of this kind from him for use as percussion powder for his guns.

Soon many people in Stockton and the Durham area were using John Walkers "friction lights," which he now began to sell at one and a half old pennies each by a local book-binder, John Ellis. Wood strips soon replaced cardboard for the matches. The Wood was cut for him by inmates of a almshouse, who were glad of a job of work and a few shillings earned.

Within a year the fame of this local invention began to spread. Financiers with an eye for gain urged Walker to exploit it commercially, but he refused. "If people want to them, they can have em," he said. He would not even patent his invention. [He ceased making matches in 1830 and died in 1859, prosperous, leaving, three thousand pounds, he could have died a millionaire.]

Imitators were soon busy. The first was Samuel Jones, also a chemist, of 201 Strand, London. He heard of the invention through the scientist Faraday, who mentioned it in a lecture at the Royal Institution. Jones, an enterprising young man, produced an identical match which he pulled Lucifer, meaning "light-bringer." He failed to get a patent because this match was only an imitation. But he has the distinction of being the first two advertise a match.

Close behind him came over Strand chemist, G. F. Watts, who marketed Watts chlorate match at six old pence a hundred. An advertisement battle developed between the pair. Then, in 1832, Richard Bell opened the first British match factory in Broad St. London, and match production began on a bigger scale. Today this firm still exists, incorporated with Bryant and May, and the Bell match-box label is still used.

About this time there came another and very important revolution. A young French chemistry student, Charles Sauria, added phosphorus to a mixture of sulfur, potash and antimony, and so created the first match would strike on anything-on the wall or on your shoe-sole. But he could not find the money to patent his invention and soon Germany seized upon it, so that by 1832 Europe began to be flooded with the new match, made in Germany and Austria. It was called the Congreve, after Sir William Congreve, controlled of Woolwich arsenal, who in 1812, had invented the war rocket.

So now the smoker is beginning to be well supplied with lights. New match types followed each other in rapid succession. The first match to cater for the out-of-doors smoker was the Fuzee, a large, thick pasteboard prototype of the modern book match. This was followed in 1849 by the Vesuvian, similar to the Fuzee, and made by John Palmer of Camberwell. About this time the match-stick was first used for advertising, household words, edited by Charles Dickens, had its name inscribed upon them. Richard Bell produced the Vesta, named after the Roman goddess of the hearth, for the first time using wax Taper instead of wood.

All these early types were someone perilous adventures to the smoker, for they were disposed to splutter and drop sparks to the detriment of clothes and furnishings. Most boxes carried warnings to invalids to avoid using them on account of the fumes. But in 1855 at Swede, John Lundstrum, brought about still another revolution by producing a safety match. British rights were acquired immediately by Bryant and May.

In 1871 an attempt by Chancellor Sir Robert Lowe to put tax of a half old pence on a box of matches was defeated by public outcry. Tax stamps had been printed. The Tax Bill was introduced on April 20th, by April 25th it was dead. But the Chancellor "got his own back" by imposing an extra two old pence on income tax instead.

The final development came in 1898, when a French chemist devised a mixture called sesquisuldhide of phosphorus, which made the perfect safety match and is used to this day.

The match now seems to have reached its limit of development, although various small improvements followed through the years, and numerous "fancies" were offered to smokers-perfumed matches, colored matches and the like.

And so it went on until, some years after the turn of the century, an Austrian professor of chemistry, Dr. Auer von Welsbach, comes into the picture. He is perhaps better known as the inventor of what became known as the Welsbach gas mantle. Yet he had more to do with the future of tobacco lighting than ever he realised at the time.
In his various experiments he fused together certain minerals to produce a hard alloy that sparked when rubbed against a rough metal surface. To the yet unborn pipe lighter of today he tossed this greatest boon, then returned to his gas mantles and other inventions and through them achieved his immortality.
He had invented cerium, which is the substance that forms the basis of the lighter flint. The patent for this cerium was vested in the Treibacher factory of Vienna, and it was here that the first "flint" lighter was manufactured. But it had no wheel action; it was a strike-lighter, it's action being similar to that of an ordinary match. Not until 1909 did the first petrol lighter with a wheel action emerge. It was made possible by the invention of the hard steel wheel-the circular file. The inventor was a workman named Findeisl, and the first manufacturer of his wheel was one Richard Kohn. Without the hardened steel the wheel would have been useless; it would have stood no length of wear, would have worn itself smooth in a very short time.
We have now the foundations of the modern lighter industry firmly laid and it's line of development clearly defined. From these beginnings came the great world-wide industry of today. The first semi-automatic lighter was devised by an engineer named Russbacher, also an Austrian, about the year 1911. It was a box or case type lighter, with a lid that flew open when a button was pressed. It was a considerable step forward.
Meanwhile, the idea had spread to Germany, and by the time the Kaiser's war was upon us, lighters were being made in that country. Some of these Austrian and German lighters came to England, but in very small numbers, and were regarded as mere novelties or toys.