Nonfiction · Level 2 · 171 words

The Match

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

For most of history, fire was hard to start and easy to lose. A household kept its fire alive all night, banking the coals in ash so a spark would live until morning. If the fire died, someone struck flint against steel over dry tinder; it could take many tries. Some families sent a child next door to carry home a live coal in a pan. Fire was borrowed like sugar.

In 1826, an English chemist named John Walker stirred a pot of paste, then scraped his mixing stick against the hearth to clean it. The stick burst into flame. One quick pull had made fire. Walker sold his "friction lights" in boxes but never patented them, so the idea spread fast.

The match made fire instant and personal. A lamp could be lit the moment it grew dark, a stove the moment you grew hungry, with no coals to guard and no neighbor to ask. Fire stopped being a thing a family kept and became a thing anyone could make.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What is the passage mainly about?

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B. How the match turned fire from something kept alive into something made at will.
The first paragraph shows fire being guarded and borrowed; the last shows it made in one pull. The closing sentence states the change directly: kept became made.

2. Why did households go to such trouble to keep a fire alive all night?

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A. Starting a fire from nothing was harder than keeping one burning.
The opening gives the rule: fire was "hard to start and easy to lose." Banking coals makes sense only if restarting was the harder job. And neighbors did share; that is what the coal in the pan shows.

3. In this passage, "banking" most nearly means

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D. covering coals in ash so they burn low and slow
The sentence explains itself: coals are banked in ash "so a spark would live until morning." The goal is to keep the fire barely alive, not to end it, and money is not involved.

4. How did John Walker discover the friction match?

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C. He scraped a paste-covered mixing stick against the hearth, and it caught fire.
The passage says he stirred a pot of paste, scraped the stick against the hearth to clean it, and "The stick burst into flame." The discovery was an accident of cleaning, not a plan.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.