James Albert Bonsack
Encyclopedia
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
rolling machine.
Until then cigarettes had been rolled by hand. Readymade cigarettes were a luxury item, but became increasingly popular. The slow manual fabrication process—a skilled cigarette roller could produce only about four cigarettes per minute on the average—was insufficient to satisfy the demands in the 1870s. In 1875, the Allan & Ginter
Allen and Ginter
Allen and Ginter was the Richmond, Virginia, tobacco manufacturing firm formed by John Allen and Lewis Ginter in 1875 that created and marketed the first cigarette cards for collecting and trading. Some of the cards in the series include Charles Comiskey, Cap Anson, Jack Glasscock, and Buffalo Bill...
company in Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
offered a prize of US$ 75,000 for the invention of a machine able to roll cigarettes. Bonsack took up the challenge and left school to devote his time to building such a machine. In 1880, he had a first working prototype, which was destroyed by a fire while in storage at Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 75,568 as of 2010. Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River, Lynchburg is known as the "City of Seven Hills" or "The Hill City." Lynchburg was the only major city in...
. Bonsack re-built it and filed a patent application on September 4, 1880. The patent was granted the following year (U.S. patents 238,640 from March 8, 1881 and 247,795 from October 4, 1881). Bonsack's machine was able to produce 120,000 cigarettes in ten hours, (200 per minute), revolutionizing the cigarette industry
Tobacco industry
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any warm, moist environment, which means it can be farmed on all...
.
Trivia
The census-designated place (CDP) of Bonsack, Virginia, located in Roanoke County, was named after James Bonsack, who lived in this town located along route 460 between Roanoke and Bedford.Further reading
- Tilley, N. M.: The bright-tobacco industry, 1860 - 1929; Arno Press, 1972; ISBN 0-405-04728-2.