JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Liggett & Myers, the producer of Chesterfield cigarettes, sounds the triumphal blast of "the greatest cigarette improvement in thirty years" in this LIFE magazine ad from 1953. It was all made possible by SCIENCE and the sacred mysteries of electronics, which helped create the "perfect-smoke-column-from-end-to-end", which doesn't sound all that appetizing though I guess it was if you were a lazy or distracted ciggie consumer. To prove the claim we see a model with perfect un-ciggied teeth with an inset of electronic machinery in the background, which made it look as though the stuff was being produced by the machine.
The machine doing the great scientific deed was the AccuRay. It was a measure and control system produced by Industrial Nucleonics (beignning their industrial life in 1912 as a steam power supply systems company), which ensured that the cigarettes would be the same, million after million, each being the same length and with the same mount of tobacco. "Scientific miracles never cease", said the Liggett & Myers people, and I guess the stained proof was in the smokey pudding.
It may have been all about the burning, as a cigarette that doesn't need to be drawn on to keep it lit means that it will burn itself out in the allotted time even if you just lighted the thing and kept it in the ashtray. Better burning meant more cigarettes consumed, and so on.
And by the way Industrial Nucleonics was sold in 1987 to a perhaps more appropriately-named Cumbustion Engineering, at least so far as cigarettes were concerned.
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