Who really invented the e-cigarette?

Did you know that the very first electronic cigarette dates back to 1963? An American designed that first prototype, but it made little impression on the public. Here is the full story of this modern substitute for the cigarette.

The early stages of the e-cigarette

As early as the eighth century, the Scythian people settled in Egypt were already inhaling vapour. It was of course nothing like the concept we know today. They were nonetheless the first to experiment with the practice.

From 1501 onwards, the Safavids in Persia were using the hookah. The technique is strikingly close to the vaporisation we know today, even if it still cannot be called an electronic cigarette.

Several inventors of the electronic cigarette?

In 1903, the French pharmacist Henry Ferré created a tubular inhaler working with a special liquid. He claimed at the time that his invention was harmless. He filed a patent, but the device was never marketed and his name was quite literally forgotten.

In 1909, the Italian Ignazio Bucceri put forward a tubular object closely resembling a cigar. He too filed a patent, in 1910. Once again, it drew little interest from smokers.

In 1927, the American Joseph Robinson proposed an electronic vaporiser. Patented in 1930, it was the very first vaporiser of its kind. In 1944, Marvin L. Folkman presented the first official substitute for the cigarette. In 1956, the American inventor Frank Bartolomeo offered his own version, in the form of a capsule containing fruit flavourings and tobacco smoke.

Herbert A. Gilbert, an American engineer, is quite simply the man regarded as the inventor of the electronic cigarette. In 1963, he filed a patent for a device meant to take the place of the conventional cigarette. He too, however, never found the success he had hoped for.

Many other designers launched prototypes, among them the Frenchman Stéphane Marc Vlachos, but the title of father of the official electronic cigarette went to the Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik in 2003. Six years later, his device was being sold across the world and met with worldwide success.