Although tobacco was known the the native Americans before the Europeans began visiting and was brought back to Europe by Columbus, the cigarette does not date back quite so far¹. The first items generally recognized by historians as cigarettes are hte papeletes of Spain, known in the early 17th century. These were made by beggars rolling tobacco from the remnants of used cigars into paper cylinders, and were the lowest-class form of smoking.

The first mass-produced cigarettes were apparently manufactured in France in 1843 by a company named SEITA.

Tobaconeer Philip Morris opened his shop in 1847 in England, selling hand-rolled cigarettes filled with Turkish tobacco. Indeed, Turkey was a center of cigarette use at the time. British soldiers acquired the habit from their Turkish allies during the Crimean War (1853-56) and increased the popularity of cigarette smoking in England. Crimean War veteran Robert Gloag opened the first cigarette factory in Englad in 1856 or 1857. His brand was named "Sweet Threes". The "Bull Durham" cigarette, an early popular brand, dates back to 1860.

In 1864 the first cigarette factory in the United States opened for business. Don't envision machinery just yet, though; all cigarettes were rolled by hand, many by "rollers" imported from Turkey themselves. In 1875 the U.S. firm of Allen & Ginter (producers of "Richmond Straight Cut No. 1" and "Pet" brand cigarettes) offered a reward of $75,000 for a cigarette rolling machine. That was quite a sum of money in those days. The first cigarette machine granted a patent was the "Bonsack machine" in 1880. This was the brainchild of 21-year-old Virginian James Albert Bonsack.

Back in London, the firm of Richard Benson and William Hedges opened a tobacconist near that of Philip Morris some time in the 1880s.

In 1881, James Duke started manufacturing hand-rolled cigarettes. His firm was the nucleus of the influential American Tobacco Company cartel (founded in 1889). In 1884, Duke purchased two of the Bonsack machines, and by the end of the year he was getting 120,000 cigarettes per machine in a ten-hour shift². In 1884 Duke's firm produced 744 million cigarettes.

A bit off the main track of cigarette history, the clove cigarette was invented in the 1890s by Indonesian entrepreneur Noto Semito as an asthma cure.

By 1900 4.4 billion cigarettes a year were being sold in the United States, 90% of them produced by American Tobacco Company. In 1911 the United States government broke up the American Tobacco Company in an early anti-trust action. The resulting companies were Liggett & Myers, P. Lorillard, American Tobacco, and R.J. Reynolds.

Philip Morris -- now owned by the Thompson family -- scored a double coup. First, they set up a corporation in New York to sell their brands in the United States, including the phenomenally successful "Marlboro"³. Second, King Albert appointed them the royal tobacconist.

In 1913 R.J. Reynolds introduced Camel, the first "modern" cigarette. "Modern" in this case refers to the blend of tobaccos which Camel publicized: Piedmont Bright and Kentucky burley flavored with 10% Turkish leaf. This combination caught on, was copied by Lucky Strike (American Tobacco Company) and Chesterfield (Liggett & Myers) and soon captured most of the cigarette market.

In World War I, all the major combatants issued a cigarette ration to their soldiers. This did much to make cigarette smoking nearly universal in that generation⁴. 1919 was the first year in which manufactured cigarette sales surpassed that of raw smoking tobacco in poundage.

Benson & Hedges introduced "Parliament" brand in 1930. This was the first cigarette in a hard box, the first with a mouthpiece, and the first with a filter tip. The early filters were cotton and caustic soda; Kent would introduce the "Micronite" filter (active ingredient: asbestos) in 1952.

Kool and Spud, the first two mentholated cigarette brands, were introduced in 1933.

Pall Mall, the first "king size" cigarette, hit the streets in 1939.

In 1956, two marketing trends (filter tips and menthol) were combined for the first time in Salem. That was also the year that the Micronite filters in Kent were discontinued, replaced with a different absorbent. Though there have been many changes in brand names and advertising slogans in the intervening decades, cigarettes and their manufacture have largely remained unchanged for the past 50 years.