James Albert Bonsack

Who was James Albert Bonsack?

James Albert Bonsack was an American inventor who invented the first 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 the average—was insufficient to satisfy the demands in the 1870s. In 1875, the Allen & Ginter company in Richmond, Virginia 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. Bonsack re-built it and filed a patent application on September 4, 1880. The patent was granted the following year. Bonsack's machine was able to produce 120,000 cigarettes in ten hours, revolutionizing the cigarette industry.

Bonsack Machine Model

Photo of James Albert Bonsack