A Century of Cigarettes provides a quick glimpse of the forces that influenced the sale of cigarettes and the resulting epidemic of lung cancer. It illustrates that at the turn of the 20th century most tobacco consumed in the U.S. was in the form of chewing tobacco and/or cigars. At that time cigarettes were largely a novelty item, but In 1881 the invention of the automated cigarette-making machine ushered in the mass production of cigarettes. Between 1900 and 1930 cigarette sales increased more than 25-fold and about a decade later the number of lung cancer deaths, which had totaled just a few hundred per year at the beginning of the century, started to increase steadily in parallel with the rise of cigarette smoking.
Set-up: 20ft. walk-around (recommended), L-shaped, or 40ft. single-sided.
*The Tobacco Deaths portion of this exhibit can be requested separately and displayed as a double-sided 10ft section or a single-sided 20ft. wall.
To take a closer look at this exhibit, view the content pages from the menu or the following high resolution PDFS.
Timeline 1900-1920
Timeline 1925-1945
Timeline 1950-1970
Timeline 1975-2000