 If I had to name an inventor who'd made the largest economic impact on the 20th century, I'd consider James A. Bonsack. The economic impact of his work might put him up there with Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the flying Wright Brothers. In 1881, Bonsack invented the automatic cigarette-making machine. It helped to back a used skyrocket in the 20th century. Using an incredible system of gears, rollers, and levers, he made 100,000 cigarettes a day. As Bonsack noted in his patent application, this general result has heretofore been attempted, but so far as I know, with but little success. Indeed, an efficient way to make cigarettes was the stumbling block to bringing tobacco to the masses. In the years before Bonsack's invention in the early 1870s, tobacco consumption had fallen to an all-time low, yet cigarette sales were at stripping demand. Growers had learned that nicotine delivered by inhalation is a highly-addicting substance. Inside the body, nicotine is absorbed by the vast surface of the lungs and passes rapidly into the bloodstream. From there, it is carried back to the heart, which sends a large dose directly and undiluted to the brain. The brain takes in all of the nicotine carried to it. This process takes only seven seconds. Compare that to heroin, which, when injected in the forearm, takes 14 seconds. So, growers worked on a way to cure the smoke so that it would be taken into the lungs, unlike cigar and pipe tobacco, which are too harsh. This new tobacco created a demand for cigarettes, the ideal vehicle for inhaling nicotine. James Bonsack's machine met the need with flying colors. Perhaps it isn't fair to blame Bonsack entirely for this. The demand for cigarettes reflected the spirit of the age. A cigarette and a pipe were smoked slowly and leisurely, but a cigarette reflected the quickening pace of our nascent industrial age. A cigarette was light, quick, and short, a potent symbol for the new velocity of a modern age. With Bonsack's speedy automatic cigarette-making machine, manufacturers helped Americans to smoke over a billion cigarettes by 1889, increasing 20 years later to over 10 billion. Today, Americans smoke nearly a trillion cigarettes a year. This, of course, has taken a tremendous human and economic toll. No wonder some have dubbed the 20th century the cigarette century. Let's hope the 21st century gets a better title.