How the Burmese Make Fire

1901

One day a Burmese messenger brought me a note. While he was waiting for the reply. I observed an object something like a boy's popgun suspended around his waist. On asking what it was he showed me that it was an implement for producing fire.

It was a rude example of a scientific instrument employed by lecturers at home to illustrate the production of heat by suddenly compressed air. A piston fitted into the tube; the former was hollowed at the lower end and smeared with wax to receive a piece of cotton or tinder, which when pressed into it adhered. The tube was closed at one end. Placing the piston at the top of the tube, with a smart blow he struck it down and immediately withdrew it with the tinder on fire, the sudden compression of the air having ignited it. I was so much struck with the scientific ingenuity of this rude implement that I procured it from the Burman and sent it to the Asiatic society of Bengal, with a short description of its uses. — "Recollections of My Life," by Surgeon General Sir John Fayer.