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“Match patent ended for humanity’s sake”

I happened to come across this anecdote about the Diamond Match Company, the largest manufacturer of matches in the United States in the nineteenth century, being persuaded to release their patent on sesquisulfide safety matches (a non-poisonous alternative to white phosphorous matches), allowing competitors to produce safe matches using the patented method.

(T)hose involved in the manufacture of the new phosphorus matches were afflicted with phossy jaw and other bone disorders, and there was enough white phosphorus in one pack to kill a person. Deaths and suicides from eating the heads of matches became frequent. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, developed a safe match using phosphorus sesquisulfide that was patented in 1898. In the United States, the Diamond Match Company obtained the patent for sesquisulfide manufacture in 1900 for a sum of $100,000. President William Howard Taft then wrote publicly to the Diamond Match Company asking them to release the patent for the good of mankind, which they did in 1911.

That ought to silence you hippies out there complaining about those evil, selfish corporations destroying the world! It’s not all oil spills and overworked Chinese factory workers, you long-haired jerks!