John Walker (inventor)

He went to the local grammar school and was afterwards apprenticed to Watson Alcock, the principal surgeon of the town, serving him as an assistant.

After studying at Durham and York he set up a small business as a chemist and druggist at 59 High Street, Stockton, around 1818.

Several chemical mixtures that would ignite by a sudden explosion were already known but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance such as wood.

While Walker was preparing a lighting mixture on one occasion, a match that had been dipped in it caught fire by an accidental friction on the hearth.

[1] Two and a half years after Walker's invention was made public Isaac Holden arrived, independently, at the same idea of coating wooden splinters with sulphur.