James Albert Bonsack, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

James Albert Bonsack

American inventor

Date of Birth: 09-Oct-1859

Date of Death: 02-Jun-1924

Profession: engineer, inventor

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About James Albert Bonsack

  • James Albert Bonsack (October 9, 1859, – June 1, 1924) was an American inventor who invented an early cigarette rolling machine in 1880. Prior to that time, 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 average—was insufficient to satisfy the demands in the 1870s.
  • In 1875, the Allen and Ginter company in Richmond, Virginia, offered a prize of US$ 75,000 (equal to $1,711,136 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.
  • In 1880, he had a first working prototype, which was destroyed by a fire while in storage at Lynchburg, Virginia.
  • Bonsack rebuilt 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 10 hours, (200 per minute), revolutionizing the cigarette industry.

Read more at Wikipedia