Cigarettes, as we know them today, were invented in the late 19th century. The key invention that led to modern cigarettes was the cigarette rolling machine, patented by James Albert Bonsack in 1880. This machine automated and greatly increased the production of cigarettes, making them cheaper and more accessible to the general public. Before this mechanization, cigarettes were primarily hand-rolled and less widely available. However, smoking tobacco itself has a much older history. Indigenous people in the Americas used tobacco for thousands of years, including rolling tobacco in paper-like materials as early as the 16th century. Early forms of cigarettes appeared during the Crimean War (1853-1856), when soldiers rolled tobacco in paper, and poor Europeans did something similar with cigar clippings by the late 18th century. Thus, while tobacco smoking dates back millennia, the invention of the manufactured cigarette with machine-assisted rolling happened specifically in 1880, marking the start of widespread cigarette use globally.