James Albert Bonsack

James Albert Bonsack (October 9, 1859,[1][2] – June 1, 1924) was an American inventor who invented an early cigarette rolling machine in 1880.

Bonsack's cigarette rolling machine, as shown on U.S. patent 238,640.

Prior to that time, cigarettes had been rolled by hand. Readymade cigarettes were a luxury item, but were becoming increasingly popular.[3] The slow manual fabrication process—a skilled cigarette roller could produce only about four cigarettes per minute on average[4]—was insufficient to satisfy demand by the 1870s. In 1875, the Allen and Ginter company in Richmond, Virginia, offered a prize of US$75,000 (equal to $1,767,500 today) 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.[3] In 1880, he had a first working prototype, which was destroyed by a fire while in storage at Lynchburg, Virginia.[4] Bonsack rebuilt it and filed a patent application on September 4, 1880.[3] The patent was granted the following year (U.S. patents 238,640[2] from March 8, 1881 and 247,795[5] from October 4, 1881). Allen and Ginter had ordered a Bonsack machine but quickly rejected it, eager to save their prize money and fearing that consumers would balk at a machine-made product.[6] Bonsack's partnership with tobacco industrialist James Buchanan Duke made full commercial use of the invention, which could produce 120,000 cigarettes in 10 hours,[4] (200 per minute), and thereby revolutionized the cigarette industry.[3]

  • Bonsack machine model
  • Photo of James Albert Bonsack

Legacy

The census-designated place 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.[7]

References
  1. Ancestry of James Albert Bonsack Archived 2007-10-20 at the Wayback Machine. URL last accessed 2006-10-11.
  2. U.S. patent 238,640, with diagrams. URL last accessed 2006-10-11.
  3. Bennett, W.: The Cigarette Century, Science 80, September/October 1980. URL last accessed 2006-10-11.
  4. Bonsack's cigarette machine Archived 2006-11-13 at the Wayback Machine. URL last accessed 2006-10-11.
  5. U.S. patent 247,795, with diagrams. URL last accessed 2006-10-11
  6. M., Brandt, Allan. The cigarette century : the rise, fall, and deadly persistence of the product that defined America. ISBN 0-465-07048-5. OCLC 1040961514.
  7. Prince Edward County seal – wheat sheaf vs tobacco hand, The Farmville Herald, Prince Edward County, September 24, 2004

Further reading
  • Tilley, N. M.: The bright-tobacco industry, 1860 - 1929; Arno Press, 1972; ISBN 0-405-04728-2.


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