No attempt was made to produce fire by chemical means until 1805. In that year M. Chancel, a Paris professor, invented an apparatus consisting of a small bottle containing asbestos, saturated with sulphuric acid, and wooden splints or matches coated with sulphur, chlorate of potash, and sugar. The wooden splint, when dipped into the bottle, was ignited. The first really successful friction matches were made in 1827 by John Walker, an English druggist. They consisted of wooden splints coated with sulphur and tipped with antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum. They were sold at a shilling or twenty-four cents per box, each box containing eighty-four matches. The modern phosphorus friction match came into use about 1833. It is not possible to ascertain precisely who the inventor was. But in that year Preschel had a factory in Vienna, Austria, for the manufacture of friction matches with phosphorus as the chief chemical. For years Austria and the States in the south of Germany were the center of the match industry. Phosphorus is still used as the principal chemical ingredient in the manufacture of matches. The first patent in the United States for a friction match was issued October 24, 1836, to Alonzo D. Phillips, of Springfield, Massachusetts. The "safety match," which will not ignite unless brought into contact with the side of the box in which it is packed, was invented by Lundström of Sweden, in 1855. The match industry in Norway and Sweden has developed during the last few years with great rapidity. About sixty factories are in operation in these countries. One town alone contains six thousand matchmakers. In France the government has the sole right to manufacture matches. Phosphorus is very poisonous, and the early manufacture of phosphorus matches was attended with loss of life and great suffering. Inhalation of phosphorus fumes produced necrosis, or decay of the bone, usually of the lower jaw. In the first years of phosphorus match making, the business was chiefly carried on by the poorer people in large cities. The work was done in damp, foul cellars; and the peculiar disease of the bone caused by the phosphorus fumes became so widespread that the different governments drove the match factories out of the cellars and ordered that the business be conducted in better ventilated buildings. But the discovery of red phosphorus, which never produces the disease, the use of lessened quantities of the ordinary phosphorus, and better ventilation have all combined to make the malady now very rare.