Lighter
tool to generate a flame
A lighter is a portable device which uses mechanical or electrical means to create a controlled flame, and can be used to ignite a variety of flammable items, such as cigarettes, butane gas, fireworks, candles, or campfires. Some lighters use a consumable chemical fuel, others use electricity from a battery.
A chemical-powered lighter typically consists of a metal or plastic container filled with a flammable liquid, a compressed flammable gas, or in rarer cases a flammable solid (e.g. rope in a trench lighter). These have a means of ignition to produce the flame, and some provision for extinguishing the flame or else controlling it to such a degree that users may extinguish it with their breath.
Electric lighters come in two varieties. One type uses hot plasma generated with an electric arc. The other type uses a resistive heating element; these were first formally used by Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler to light cigars, and have since been incorporated into cigarette lighters attached to automobile auxiliary power outlets.
History
The first lighters were converted flintlock pistols that used gunpowder. In 1662, Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna as a member of an Ottoman diplomatic mission, and admired the lighters being manufactured there: "Enclosed in a kind of tiny box are tinder, a steel, sulphur, and resinous wood.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20459. The Library of Congress control number is sh85025949. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1662.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lighter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.