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Modern Vaping:

A Short but Interesting History

A Man Far Too Ahead of His Time

Herbert A. Gilbert, a man whose name makes as much sense said backwards as it does forwards, was obviously a dude who liked to have it both ways. This ‘having of the cake and also eating it’ attitude had Herbert on the hunt for something that combined the joys of cigarette smoking, with none if the less desirable effects on health, hygiene and appearance.

This was the 1963, after all, when your doctor would treat your pneumonia while simultaneously blowing cigar smoke in your face. Non-smokers weren’t to be trusted.

Herbert, an inventor and self-confessed man of logic, took inspiration from his aunt’s bakery. While he compared smoking a standard cigarette to hovering your head above a burning fire, with ash, smoke and other particulates bombarding your lungs, his aunt’s bread oven used heat activation to deliver the far more pleasant smell and sensation of baked bread. What if he could create a cigarette that worked like an oven, rather than a bonfire?

What Herbert managed to come up with is now recognised as the world’s first ever e-cigarette. The device was referred to in its patent as ‘a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette’ that worked by replacing burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist and flavoured air.

While it was granted a patent in 1965, the device came at a time when smoking was very much in vogue. The flavoured steam it produced, bereft of nicotine, wasn’t particularly helpful in weaning smokers off of their habit, which hardly anyone was looking to do anyway. Herbert and his invention faded into the darkness without ever going into production.

Did Someone Say ‘Vape’?

The next foray into the world of e-cigarettes seems to have come in the late 70s, when Dr Norman L. Jacobson, a mysterious man whose entire legacy is confined to a couple of newspaper snippets, was reported to have completed a successful trial of nicotine vapour as a harmless alternative to smoking.

While the device through which the nicotine was delivered isn’t pictured, what we do know is that it was developed by computer entrepreneur J. Phillip Ray, a man who appears to have left even less of a legacy than Dr Jacobson.

While the two-year trial didn’t result in an e-cigarette for the open market (the leading theory is that the device was either bought or suppressed by the tobacco industry), it did give the world its first reference to the concept of ‘vaping’ and ‘vapers’. Dr Jacobsen used these terms to describe the trial’s participants and the activity that they were engaging in, making the trial the first recorded use of vapours as a cigarette smoke alternative.

Hon Lik and the Birth of the Modern E-Cigarette

Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist and inventor, was a heavy smoker. What may not have helped was that his Father was a heavy smoking before him. But the smokes had caught up with Dad, who was in the late stages of lung cancer.

One night in 2001, according to Hon, he dreamt that he was drowning in a deep sea. Suddenly, the water vaporised, and he became surrounded by a bright and colourful fog. Waking up the next morning, it came to him. Why not replace cigarette smoke with vapour?

Hon came up with a device that used a high-frequency, piezoelectric, ultrasound-emitting element to vaporise a pressurised jet of liquid that contained nicotine, creating a vapour that made the experience feel stunningly close to cigarette smoking.

While the device wouldn’t be enough to save his father (although Mr Lik did get the opportunity to try it before he passed), it was enough to save Hon, who made the switch from 3 packs a day to a committed e-cigarette user.

The device entered the Chinese market in 2004, slowly gathering steam (or vapour, sorry) until the point at which Golden Dragon Holdings, Hon’s employer and a company devoted to ginseng products, entirely changed its business model to be centred around Hon’s new product. They even changed their name in 2007 to Ruyan, which quite literally means ‘resembling smoking’.

A tipping point came in 2006/07, when the US and European markets developed a taste for vape. The new trend exploded, and illegal copies of Hon’s design flooded the market. As such, Hon hasn’t seen much in the way of remuneration for his invention, although many larger e-cigarette manufacturers have compensated him in recent years under the threat of legal action.

In the last decade, the industry of vaping has grown exponentially. People have been won over by the benefits, and vaping is now seen not only as legitimate but as a better alternative to conventional cigarettes.

And it couldn’t have happened without pioneers like Gilbert, Ray and Lik, who sound like a horrible 70s folk trio when their names are lined up like that. So charge your e-cigs, and give a cheers to these vape battlers, who laid the vaping path that many of us tread happily on today.