Making cigarettes have had the same principle for decades. A pinch of shredded tobacco was put on paper, and the worker, with a strip of felt on the palm of his hand, rubbing over the pit, so grabbing the protruding part of the paper and forming the cigarette lighter with a rolling movement. The ends were then sealed with glue. The stocks were kept on the table and the finished cigarettes were removed by other workers; packagers grabbed twenty cigarettes and placed them in ordered rolls and enclosed them in paper boxes. The manufacturing work and packaging was indeed very slow. They therefore sought new solutions, using machines that could reduce the cost of production and in order to obtain a production on a larger scale. Lucky for humanity, we are at a stage where we have invented V2 ecigs promo codes.
In 1880 a new machine was developed which was used to produce 200 cigarettes per minute, equivalent to 96,000 pieces in 8 hours, able to replace the work of about 48 human reels. Soon the technical innovation led to the collapse of the sale price of cigarettes. In 1886 the William H. Kerr machine was able to pack 90,000 packets per day compared to 600 for an average worker. In 1896 machines were producing automatically and accurately weighed each piece of tobacco. The stage was set for mass production.
Now it was necessary to prepare the market or create demand prompting the need for consumption and the only way to do that was through the strong marketing and advertising campaigns. The first who understood the importance of the dual marriage was James Buchanan Duke regarded as one of the people who contributed most to popularize the use of cigarettes in the world. Unlike V2 ecigs that market themselves, the tobacco industries resorted to mechanisms to induce addiction.
In 1880, at age 24, Duke opened a cigarette factory in Durham. In the following years he started a collaboration with James Bonsack, a young mechanic who had invented a machine to produce cigarettes. The invention of Bonsack, after being perfected, allowed them to produce about 120,000 cigarettes a day, an amount roughly equal to one-fifth of the whole supply at the time in the United States. Duke then had to try to increase the number of smokers. To this end, he sponsored sporting events, gave cigarettes to beauty contests, bought advertising space in magazines and included trading cards in packs of cigarettes.
In 1889 spending on advertising was over 800 thousand dollars, about 25 million current dollars. The strategy was spot on. Duke, in 1890 covered 40% of the US cigarette market. In that year he took control of the four rival companies in the sector and founded the American Tobacco Company, a real monopoly. In 1906 the company was convicted of violating antitrust law and was forced to split into three separate companies.
Meanwhile his success grew: he managed to expand into new countries, spreading the habit of smoking among women. In the nineteenth century in fact the only women who used to smoke were prostitutes. Duke realized that to convince the rest of the female population to smoke, he had to change the social significance of smoking and so relied on advertising cigarettes that transformed into a symbol of the emancipation of the female. In the films of the early decades of the ’90s almost all the stars were smoking dramatically, just to set a good example to the masses. Beautiful women and charismatic actors smoked to increase the charm of the gesture, a phenomenon that was not accidental: it was indirect advertising, implemented by means of payments handed out by the tobacco companies. They were leaving no stone unturned. The advent of v2 ecigs and others is a threat and these companies are trying to force their way into this market as well.
It was not just advertising to spread the use of cigarettes, but also the war. Military rations allocated to different countries to enlisted soldiers to fight in World War I included cigarettes, in this way the production tripled from 1914 to 1919. On their return from conflicts soldiers became regular smokers because they had developed the typical form of nicotine addiction. The same dynamic occurred during the Second World War. Subsequently cigarettes became products used by governments to finance themselves through taxes. V2 electronic cigarettes will stand firm in the face of greedy manipulation and not become a means of selling gift wrapped death to their consumers.
