The History of Vaping
So where exactly did this idea come from? Just like many other things, sometimes you wonder exactly who it was that decided one day that we needed to mimic a cigarette with an electronic device.
Vaping, as little as you hear it, actually has a pretty rich history, with inventors patenting versions of it since as far back as 1930. Let’s run through some of the clever minds behind the modern e-cigarette and this vaping past-time that has taken off so much over the last 10 years.
1930 was the year of the first documented reference to an electronic cigarette. Many don’t know about this one, but, it’s form was a patent granted to Joseph Robinson that was filed in 1927. For all research purposes, his invention was never commercialised and there was no prototype of his device ever manufactured.
1965, thirty five years later, Herbert A. Gilbert was granted a patent which was filed for in 1963, and successfully created several prototypes for his invention (The smokeless non-tobacco cigarette). Due to the prolific use of cigarettes and a failure to commercialise his product, nothing ever came to market. However, it has been cited that his invention was featured in the December 1965 issue of Popular Mechanics, which interestingly even mentions that “warmed chemicals could simulate the flavour of anything from root beer to rum” and that “the smokeless cigarette also had medical potential”, making a point that asthma patients could be given medication through the lungs.
The following years saw many a patent filed, particularly around the 1990’s when the anti-smoking movement exploded and individual inventors and tobacco companies scrambled to create alternative smoking devices. Many of them not as similar as the previous patents but loosely based on the same theme. Various patents for inhaler devices were filed as well as other based on evaporation using physical propulsion, or “heat not burn” philosophies, but none that resembled the modern e-cigarette.
Enter the Millennia, and in 2003, the first commercially successful electronic cigarette was created. In Beijing, China, the pharmacist Hon Lik, created the device after his father, who was a heavy smoker, passed away from lung cancer. Over the coming years, Hon Lik would go on to file several other patents relating to e-cigarettes with differing versions, and see his commercial product venture overseas for sale to Europe in 2006 and the USA in 2007.
Since 2007, the development of e-cigarette hardware has advanced tremendously. From an outsider or a new vaper, this might seem as though innovation and production has simply sky-rocketed out of nowhere, but in truth, it has in fact been very progressive.
Cig-a-likes were one of the first to market, attempting to mimic the real thing, in both size and action. Compared to today’s devices, they were underpowered and not very efficient, but they were marketed, and started to get popular. They originally came out in a 3 piece design, battery/atomiser/flavour cartridge, and were similar to Hon Lik’s original ideas.
Innovation in this space didn’t stop, they evolved, and where there were once 3 pieces, there were now two, aiding ease of use, as well as now using a resistance wire element wrapped around cotton to provide the vapour. The new cartridge that contained not only the eliquid cartridge, but also the wick and heating element, became known as the cartomizer.
Further innovation saw the Cig-a-like become mostly an auto-fire device. Meaning that instead of a button to activate the heating of the coil, it was operated by a sensor that could tell when the user would inhale. Popular e-cigarette brands like NJoy, were born from this design, and continued on with making small improvements and refining their systems to give their end users and even more seamless experience.
Not everyone was happy with the first foray into vaping though. Many found these new cig-a-likes cumbersome, difficult to use, prohibitively expensive and hard to source. The concept was sound, the idea and potential to use this vapourisation system to help smokers deliver nictone and eventually quit smoking was more than viable, the execution to some left more to be desired.
And so a new culture appeared. One that stemmed from the inability to source hardware as well as not being satisfied with the efforts that had already been made. Not directly attributed to cig-a-likes but driven from even earlier attempts at creating an e-cigarette that was effective. This was a modders culture if you will. One where users would share their builds, coming up with all kinds of new and alternate ways to vape. These pioneering years saw many of the innovations that are around today, tried and tested, developed and refined, all from keen hobbyists just looking to quit the cigarettes.
This parallel of cultures, is what helped propel the advancement of vaping to what it is today. While the retail and consumer focused development was being carried out by the likes of larger companies focusing on beginners and simplifying products for sale, the hobbyists were delving into the deeper depths of prototyping higher powered hardware, and new ways of maximising the effectiveness of their inventions. While these were seemingly contrasting cultures working from two different angles, soon enough the two worlds would collide into the huge industry that it is today.
Consumer and retail products had a very stepped progression, jumping from technology to technology, where the creations from modders took on a more gradual and wider variety of product, and drove innovation directly, leaving big corporations always a step behind.
While cig-a-likes were finally being marketed, modders had already developed mechanical box mods, Genesis atomiser tanks, and RDAs. All very different still to what many of us now use, but were the innovations that shaped today’s market.
A big breakthrough then came from a few select Chinese companies, one in particular, Joyetech, whom pioneered their flagship device, the Ego.
This was a game changer. Finally a device that could be not only filled with more eliquid, but one that was more powerful and carried a much larger battery. Not to mention, being a device that used a tank rather than a cartomizer.
Just like the cig-a-like, one of the first versions of the Ego kit was a 3 piece, having a separate eliquid tank to it’s coil and wick, further iterations saw the coil and wick as an attachment to the tank turning it into a true two piece system. The clearomizer was born.
The Ego devices were such a hit that various versions were brought to market, being that the entire tank/clearomizer could simply be unscrewed from the battery created another market, tanks. At this point they were all clearomizers, usually a plastic tank with a coil and silica rope as a wick, but that lead to more and more versions of the clearomizer brought to market and with them being sold separately, all using the common connector known as the Ego connector.
The “Ego connector” was an adaptation of the already established “510” connector, with an additional ring with theading around it for more stability. The fact that even tanks with only a “510” connector could still be used on an ego battery was a bonus and helped establish the Ego battery as a versatile bit of kit.
While the Ego kits were selling like hotcakes, the modder community were continuously evolving. Having virtually single-handedly invented the mechanical tube mod, box mod, genesis tanks and RDAs in previous years, as well as the 18650 lithium ion battery becoming the power source of choice, their attention turned to bigger and better things. And when I say bigger and better, I mean literally.
Everything got bigger, and more powerful very quickly. Vapers were content for a while using mouth to lung setups, often running low wattage/high ohm builds, rarely building below the 1ohm benchmark due to safety concerns… Until the sub-ohm era.
Battery technology got better. All Of a sudden 25amp batteries were readily available, so builds were getting lower, pulling much more power with larger wire gauges being used. Dual coils were becoming the norm, eliquid was getting thicker, clouds we’re getting bigger. Vaping was getting a lot more attention with hoards of smokers taking the plunge and trying this new hobby in the hopes of kicking their cigarette habits. Everything just seemed to amplify almost overnight. Vaping had reached a point of no return.
Manufacturers took notice of this booming market and started to get in in the game big time. Developing products that reflected many of those designs that modders had innovated in previous years, as well as even more advanced hardware truly bringing the technology age to vaping.
… And so here we are, in this wonderful golden age of vaping, brought to you by the people with a vision, the inventors, the innovators, the hobbyists, the manufacturers, and of course, all of your fellow vapers too. This is the history of vaping.
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