|
|
Cigarette machine:
A Public Radio Commentary
by Bill Hammack
Listen using RealAudio
If I had to name an inventor who'd made the largest impact on the
last century, I'd consider James A. Bonsack. The economic impact
of his work might put him up there with Thomas Edison, Alexander
Graham Bell, and the flying Wright brothers.
In 1881 Bonsack invented the automatic cigarette making machine.
It helped tobacco use skyrocket in the 20th century.
Using an incredible system of gears, rollers, and levers, it made
one hundred thousand cigarettes a day. As Bonsack noted in his
patent application "This general result has heretofore been
attempted, but so far as I know with but little success." Indeed,
an efficient way to make cigarettes was the stumbling block to
bringing tobacco to the masses.
In the years before Bonsack's invention, in the early 1870s,
tobacco consumption had fallen to an all-time low, yet cigarette
sales were outstripping demand. Growers had learned that nicotine
delivered by inhalation is a highly addicting substance. Once
inside the body nicotine is absorbed by the vast surface of the
lungs, and passes rapidly into the bloodstream. From there is it
carried back to the heart, which sends a large dose directly, and
undiluted, to the brain. The brain, takes in all of the nicotine
carried to it. This process take only seven seconds. Compare that
to heroin, which, when injected in the forearm, takes 14 seconds.
So, growers worked out a way to cure the smoke so that it could
be taken into the lungs, unlike cigar and pipe tobacco, which are
too harsh. This new tobacco created a demand for cigarettes, the
ideal vehicle for inhaling nicotine. James Bonsack's machine met
the need with flying colors.
Perhaps it isn't fair to blame Bonsack entirely for this. The
demand for cigarettes reflected the spirit of the age. A cigar
and a pipe were smoked slowly and leisurely, but a cigarette
reflected the quickening pace of our nascent industrial age. A
cigarette was "light, quick, and short", a "potent symbol of the
new velocity of modern life."
With Bonsack's speedy automatic cigarette making machine,
manufacturers helped Americans to smoke over a billion cigarettes
by 1889, increasing twenty years later to over ten billion. Today
American's smoke nearly a trillion cigarettes per year. This, of
course, has taken a tremendous human and economic toll.
No wonder some have dubbed the 20th century the "Cigarette
Century." Let's hope the 21st century gets a better title.
The quotations are from Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang
Shivelbusch published by Pantheon, New York, 1992.
Copyright 2001 William S. Hammack Enterprises
|
|
