John Edvard Lundström
Encyclopedia
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Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
industrialist and inventor who pioneered the production of safety match
Match
A match is a tool for starting a fire under controlled conditions. A typical modern match is made of a small wooden stick or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by frictional heat generated by striking the match against a suitable surface...
es. Johan is spelt John outside Scandinavia.
Biography
Johan was born in 1815 in the town of Jönköping, Sweden. Johan Edvard is most of all recognized to have improved the safety match and made it possible to commercially exploit it. The safety match had been invented and patented by the Swedish chemist Gustaf Erik PaschGustaf Erik Pasch
Gustaf Erik Pasch was a Swedish inventor and professor of chemistry at Karolinska institute in Stockholm and inventor of the safety match. He was born in Norrköping, the son of a carpenter. He enrolled at Uppsala University in 1806 and graduated with a masters degree in 1821...
(1788–1862) in 1844, but at that time, it was too difficult to produce it. In 1845 Johan Edvard started to experiment with these new type of matches in a small workshop he had rented. In 1846 his younger brother Carl Frans (1823–1917) joined his small workshop. In 1847 they were ready to set up a production plant and bought an estate on the coast of Lake Vättern
Vättern
Vättern is the second largest lake in Sweden, after Lake Vänern and the sixth largest lake in Europe. It is a long, finger-shaped body of fresh water in south central Sweden to the southeast of Vänern pointing at the tip of Scandinavia....
where they built a large match factory. Today, their original factory is a museum.
Before the safety match was invented, matches were dangerous for the workers in the factory because the use of the very poisonous white/yellow phosphorus
Phosphorus
Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...
that the workers were inhaling, in particular those who worked with the application on the sticks. After some years of exposure they could get infected from the poisonous phosphorus and get a disease called “Phossy jaw
Phossy jaw
Phossy jaw, formally phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, is an occupational disease of those who work with white phosphorus, also known as yellow phosphorus, without proper safeguards. It was most commonly seen in workers in the match industry in the 19th and early 20th century...
” and could lose their teeth. This disease was very deadly. When the cause for the disease was discovered, the ventilation in the production process was improved, but the dangerous type of phosphorus were soon forbidden to use for matches. The safety match used the non-poisonous red phosphorus that was placed on the striking surface, not the match itself. The reason they were called “safety matches” was because they would only ignite on the striking surface on the box, nowhere else would the match ignite. The safety match patent included the combination of using red phosphorus and separating it from the stick. Johan made it possible to mass-produce the safety match.
The Lundström safety match got an award at the “World Exhibition” in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
1855. Alexander Lagerman (1836–1904), a Swedish engineer that was employed by the Lundström brothers, invented the first fully automatic match machine. The safety match combined with the advanced machines that the company developed themselves, soon made the company in Jönköping the largest match company in Scandinavia and one of the world's largest match production companies. Today the safety match is the most widely used match in the world.
J. E. Lundström left the match business in Jönköping around 1862–63 to work with his cellulose
Cellulose
Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand β linked D-glucose units....
factory, Munksjö Cellulose, in Jönköping that he had founded in 1862 together with Lars Johan Hierta
Lars Johan Hierta
Lars Johan Hierta was a Swedish newspaper publisher, social critic, businessman and politician. He is best known as the founder of the newspaper Aftonbladet in 1830. Hierta was a leading agitator for political and social reform in Sweden during the 19th century...
. In 1869 he left the Munksjö factory and founded Katrinefors cellulose industry in Mariestad
Mariestad
Mariestad is a locality and the seat of Mariestad Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 15,448 inhabitants in 2005. It was until 1997 the capital of the former Skaraborg County and an episcopal see in the Church of Sweden between 1583 and 1646....
, but left that business in 1875. He then worked as a government inspector in the match industry between 1875–77 in Sweden and was to a great extent involved in the work to prevent and forbid the use of the dangerous white phosphorus
Phosphorus
Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...
.
J. E. Lundström died in 1888 at the age of 73, having never married. His brother Carl Frans had left the match industry in 1863 and moved to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
to work with other projects. A new generation took over the factory in Jönköping but details about this is not very well documented. Most likely, the brothers both sold their shares in Jönköping factory around 1863. Whether J. E. Lundström had any children or any other relatives that were involved in the factory is not known.
In 1917 the company in Jönköping was sold to Ivar Kreuger
Ivar Kreuger
Ivar Kreuger was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. In 1908 Kreuger co-founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll Byggnads AB which specialized in new building techniques. By aggressive investments and innovative financial instruments he built a global match...
and incorporated in the company Svenska Tändsticks AB, today known as Swedish Match
Swedish Match
Swedish Match is a Swedish company based in Stockholm that makes snus, tobacco, cigars , Red Man Chewing Tobacco, dipping tobacco, matches and lighters. It was founded as Svenska Tändsticksaktiebolaget by Ivar Kreuger in 1917 in Jönköping...
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Source
External links
- http://www2.jonkoping.se/kultur/matchmuseum/engindx.htmMatch museum in JönköpingJönköping-Notable people:*Lillian Asplund, RMS Titanic survivor*John Bauer, illustrator, painter*Amy Diamond, singer*Agnetha Fältskog, ABBA*Carl Henrik Fredriksson, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Eurozine*Anders Gustafsson, kayaker, Olympian...
, Sweden.]