Another Englishman, Henry Louis, told how he obtained a specimen which might fit this theory while camped “on a little stream known as Ayer Katiah, a tributary to the Teluban River.” Mr. Louis related that a party of Malays came down from some neighboring villages, squatted down in camp and began to smoke. One of the party, a young man, “in the most matter-of-fact way,” took out his fire piston and lit his cigarette.
“In this the cylinder is of wood, 6.4 cm long, neatly bound round with bands of plaited cane,” he reported. “The lower end is rounded off, instead of terminating in the point so characteristic of other specimens from the peninsula. The piston, of hard wood, is very short and has a large, roughly carved head. The packing is of pale vegetable fiber. A large bean shell serves as a tinder box: it appears to be an ‘entada’ bean.”
Further, if the blow guns were made of bamboo, it is conceivable that a rod was jammed down the stalk, breaking through the nodes with enough force to create compression and cause bamboo shavings inside the shaft to ignite. In support of this theory, some simple, primitive-looking fire pistons from the Cachins were made of natural bamboo cylinders.
Origin and Distribution
It was known that the principle of producing heat by compression of air was discovered in England and France by both accident and scientific experiment, and that this principle was to some extent adapted to domestic use there by the invention of the fire piston. So it is at least clear that the European form was not derived from the east. But did the eastern instrument come from Europe?
By 1900 there were very few examples of the fire piston left in Europe. Some specimens had been donated to various museums from private collections, but it had apparently been discarded as a viable instrument for firemaking in Europe by that time. This was evidently not the case in some of the less developed Asian cultures however, where Mel found one still in practical use as late as the 1970s.
It is significant to note that in 1900 the scientific world refused to recognize that early Asians, referred to as mere “savages,” could possibly discover, much less develop for common use, such a highly scientific instrument. This assumption was based solely on the belief that undeveloped people were also unintelligent.
As I see it, the big question is whether or not a thorough, unbiased study was made of the true discovery and evolution of the fire piston, given the attitude of the scientific community at a time when fire pistons were available for study. Even as late as 1907, when Dr. Balfour published his rather lengthy study of the evolution of the fire piston, they were scarce and seldom used or found in Europe. Yet, at the time of his report many examples of fire pistons of Malaysian and Siamese origin were still observed in practical use.
Apparently the scientific community in the early 1900s had trouble explaining how native peoples, in a comparatively undeveloped culture, could possibly have arrived independently at the knowledge necessary for the invention of this method of fire production. After all, it had only been 100 years since the first English patent was taken out for a fire piston, and the scientific knowledge of obtaining a spark by this method dated from only a very few years earlier. Since this was beyond grasp for people who believed themselves to be in the “highest state of civilization and scientific advancement,” they presumed that the fire piston must have been introduced by some more highly cultured race.
Although Dr. Balfour, from a purely practical standpoint, eventually talked himself out of his prejudice, he remained skeptical. “It seems almost incredible,” he surmised, “that so delicate and far from obvious a method can have been discovered, whether by accident or by gradual development, by any of the eastern peoples amongst whom it has been found in use. At the same time, it must be admitted that this is the only serious difficulty which lies in the way of admitting the possibility of an independent origin in the two main regions of distribution.”
To the contrary, from references preceding 1907, we learn that prior to 1865, the fire piston was already well known in the east over a very extensive geographical area, including Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and the islands to the east of Java. It seems likely that considerable time would be required to account for this extensive distribution, even if the fire piston had been introduced by travelers from the west, which it clearly was not.
Although Dr. Balfour agrees that the French made some use of the fire piston, they did not have contact with the eastern regions where it was distributed. Nor was there any evidence that the Chinese (except on the Burmese and Siamese borders) might have discovered it, although they are commonly credited with the invention of many strange and wonderful things.
There is also some controversy as to whether the fire piston might have been discovered by the Siamese and not the Malays, but it seems that the Malays were, nonetheless, the main source of distribution over the islands of the East Indian Archipelago from Sumatra to the Philippines.
It is interesting to note that the Europeans “discovered” the fire piston in the same manner as Dr. Balfour explains the discovery in the east, by accident. Still, being cultures of “high intelligence” he finds no difficulty in crediting the French and English.
At this point I would like to note my own theory based on purely scientific principles of observation: According to three parallel reports; the Nelson Annandale report, the anecdote of Henry Louis, and the account by Mel Deweese, we can credit the smoking of cigarettes by Asian natives as the most common use of fire pistons in that part of the world during the mid 1800s through 1970.
Certainly, this unfounded assumption is no more ridiculous than the declaration that primitive Asian cultures could not possibly have invented a fire piston because they were considered to be of “low intelligence.”
But I digress . . .
In summary, the distribution of the fire piston seems to have been a wide one in the Malay Peninsula where it was found to be used by both the Malaysians and what were known at that time as Siamese.
As for distribution in other parts of Asia, there are reports of the fire piston having been observed in use in Burma, French Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo-Sarawak, British North Borneo, Java, Flores, and the Philippine Islands.
Materials
With the single exception of the peculiar type from British North Borneo, all the eastern forms of the fire piston are essentially the same in general structure. The details which can be modified or varied include the materials used in the manufacture of the cylinder and piston, which may be of bamboo, wood, horn, ivory, bone, brass, or lead (or lead and tin); the external form; and the accessories, such as the tinder container, which may be separate from the instrument, made of bamboo, nut shells, beans, palm bark, or woven materials. Prickers for adjusting the tinder, grease boxes and a spatula for applying the grease to the piston packing are optional accessories.
The Philippine fire piston Mel Deweese owns is a proven, working model. He has used and demonstrated it continually for over 15 years that I know of, so it has obviously proven durable under repeated use. As such, it seems like an ideal model to study and duplicate. I asked Mel about it’s construction.
“This one is made out of water buffalo horn and a hard piece of wood,” he explained. “The tinder is from the palm tree, which I think is the real secret, finding the right tinder. We’re back to the triangle again, oxygen, friction and fuel and you have the oxygen and the fuel, but where do we get the friction. It’s the friction of the molecules being compressed.”