Have you ever wondered about the origins of vaping? It kind of just showed up and seemed to take the world by storm, didn’t it? The history is actually fascinating and goes further back than one would ever imagine. Follow us down the rabbit hole and learn a little bit more about the electronic device that turned into an awesome subculture.
Believe it or not, we have to go all the way back to the 1930s to begin the journey of the electronic cigarette. Well, kind of. In 1930 a guy named Joseph Robinson received a patent to create the first electronic cigarette. As you can imagine, it was much more primitive than what we know of today and unfortunately, it is unknown if a prototype was ever made from his plans. But it was here that the idea was born!
The next big jump for the creation of the e-cig as we know it was made by Herbert A. Gilbert in 1965. He was the first to follow through on creating a prototype but was unsuccessful at commercializing it on a large scale. Then, in 1979, a computer engineer named Phil Ray finally found commercial success with an e-cigarette that relied on actually vaporizing the nicotine. Unfortunately, the product was never as good as Ray desired for nicotine delivery and it fell to the wayside. Even so, Ray and his colleagues were responsible for introducing the term “vape” into the culture.
By the 1990s, e-cigs were popping up all over the place. Some were made by tobacco companies and others were made by individuals, but only a few were like we know them to be today. Some manufacturers struggled to get FDA approval for their products but failed to do so because it was considered an ‘unapproved drug delivery device’.
In 2003, the vape as we know it was born at the hands of a 52-year-old pharmacist in Beijing, China named Hon Lik. He was an avid smoker and his father, who also smoked, had recently died of lung cancer, thus birthing his inspiration. By 2006, the vape had been introduced to both Europe and the United States.
E-cigs and vapes have been through a lot of litigation over the years. Access has been restricted, along with certain e-juice flavors, in many countries. The FDA has put out many claims against electronic cigarettes in an effort to defame them in the eyes of the public. Still, studies show that they are many, many times less harmful than smoking cigarettes outright.
