James Albert Bonsack is credited with inventing the cigarette-making machine, which revolutionized cigarette production.
While smoking tobacco in various forms has existed for centuries, the mass production of cigarettes as we know them today became possible with the invention of automated machinery. Before Bonsack's machine, cigarettes were primarily hand-rolled.
Bonsack's machine, patented in 1880, was a significant innovation. It could produce approximately 120,000 cigarettes in a 10-hour workday, drastically increasing production speed and lowering costs compared to hand-rolling, which produced around 3,000 cigarettes per day. His machine used a complicated blade to cut the tobacco cylinder into cigarettes of a uniform length. This invention played a key role in the widespread adoption of cigarette smoking.
