The Cigarette machine

Bill nominates, perhaps only provocatively, James Bosnack's cigarette machine as the invention with the greatest economic impact on the 20th century. Cigarettes, as compared to pipes and cigars, are and the most direct way to deliver nicotine to the brain. Bosnack's machine made the mass production of cigarettes possible. The use of cigarettes, of course, has taken a tremendous human and economic toll. (The quotations are from Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang Shivelbusch published by Pantheon, New York, 1992.)