Our next ‘Jewish Invention’ myth is the cigarette making machine which is claimed to be a ‘jewish invention’ by Pam Karp on her ‘Jewish Inventors’ list at ‘Geni’.
She claims that the inventor was:
‘Bernhard Baron – cigarette making machine’ (1)
The problem is that this is complete hogwash Bernhard Baron produced his cigarette rolling machine circa 1895 when he visited London from Russia to try and sell the patent rights and ended up establishing his own company called the ‘Baron Cigarette Machine Company Limited’ in Aldgate in London before having a wider career as a tobacco industry as a company director. (2)
The cigarette making machine – and the ability to mass produce cigarettes – is often claimed to have been first created by the American inventor James Bonsack in 1880 with his ‘Bonsack Cigarette Machine’, (3) but in truth the first cigarette machine that we know of was actually developed and sold by Luis Susini in Cuba in 1867 and is called the ‘Susini Machine’. (4)
However, the ‘Susini Machine’ was not a commercial successful as it was difficult to use and was abandoned in favour of later inventions like the ‘Bonsack Cigarette Machine’ which could mass produce cigarettes without the fiddly production problems of the ‘Susini Machine’.
However, neither the ‘Susini Machine’ nor the ‘Bonsack Cigarette Machine’ were invented by jews and Baron’s ‘new cigarette machine’ was only invented circa 1895; 15 years after the ‘Bonsack Cigarette Machine’.
So no jews did not invent cigarette making machine.
References
(1) https://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Inventors/12388
(2) https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30614
(3) For example: https://www.britannica.com/topic/smoking-tobacco/The-age-of-the-cigarette#ref845900; https://historycooperative.org/who-invented-the-cigarette/
(4) https://www.vox.com/2015/3/18/8243707/cigarette-rolling-machines