a cigarette factory in cuba. strgetty imagesdon&39t miss stories. follow voxover the course of the 20th century, the cigarette went from niche product to massmarket success. in 1890, cigarettes were an insignificant portion of the american tobacco market, especially compared with cigars, chew, and pipes. that has changed significantlyforms of tobacco consumption burns et al., via us department of agricultureso why did americans go from being a nation of cigar smokers to a nation of cigarette addicts it wasn&39t just the addictive nature of smoking. technology also played a huge role &mdash new machines were able to make cigarettes at a shockingly rapid pace.the cigaretterolling machine transformed the tobacco marketcigarettemanufacturing technology has changed drastically over time, as gary cross and robert proctor explain in their book packaged pleasures. in the 19th century, companies could only roll four to five cigarettes per minute. by 2006, they could roll 20,000 per minute you can see a full list of the progression here.cigaretterolling machine speeds, 1800 to present.before 1880, cigarettes were rolled by hand, which meant a rate of only a few cigarettes per minute. one of the first cigaretterolling machines, the susini, appeared in 1867, but was finicky and wasn&39t widely adopted.things changed significantly in 1880, when james bonsack invented a machine that could roll 210 cigarettes a minute, or 20,000 cigarettes in 10 hours. he was spurred on by an industry prize that promised 75,000 to anyone who could build a reliable rolling device.the bonsack machine worked by creating a single long cigarette that could be cut into appropriate portions. it found rapid adoption by james buchanan duke&39s american tobacco company, which eventually split into r.j. reynolds, lorillard, liggett & myers, and american tobacco company.the original patent drawing for the bonsack machine. wikimedia commonsinnovations like the bonsack machine were followed by american and international inventions that further increased cigarette production and packaging. in the modern era, cigaretteproducing machines are so sophisticated that japan tobacco, a japanese manufacturer, also makes a machine that applies semiconductors to circuit boards.was technology the main reason cigarettes caught onthe shortening of cigarettemanufacturing times correlates well with the rise in smoking rates worldwide. even though cigarettesmoking rates have declined in the united states thanks to aggressive publichealth campaigns, global smoking rates have continued to increase in tandem with the rapid technological increases. in 1911, the chinese smoked 7.5 billion cigarettes. by 2012, that figure had risen to 2.4 trillion.so have rolling machines driven the rise of cigarettes to some extent, this is a chickenandegg problem. if customers hadn&39t wanted cigarettes in the first place, it wouldn&39t matter how fast cigarette machines were. on the other hand, massive improvements in cigarette production enabled lower prices that probably spurred demand. fast cigarette machines allow a labor force of around 10,000 americans to make 400 billion cigarettes a year.other factors like mass marketing and mass distribution no doubt played a part in cigarettes&39 rise. but the cigarette has proven to be a uniquely appealing &mdash and addictive &mdash form of tobacco delivery. technological advances certainly deserve some of the credit or blame 
