Many people wonder about who actually invented the electronic cigarette. Most don’t know, while others would claim it is Hon Lik from China. But in 1963, Herbert A. Gilbert filed his patent on a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette. Two years later his patent was accepted. The whole patent issue becomes somewhat complicated when you consider new technology and different designs, but what is clear is that 46 years ago Herbert submitted the idea of a smokeless cigarette to the United States Patent Office. Here is an excerpt:
“The present invention relates to a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette and has for an object to provide a safe and harmless means for and method of smoking by replacing burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavored air; or by inhaling warm medication into the lungs in case of a respiratory ailment under direction of a physician.”
Herbert….I’m telling the FDA you said that.
View the PDF of Herbert’s Smokeless Non-Tobacco Cigarette
Does this look familiar?
Herbert A. Gilbert even got a plug the December 1965 issue of Popular Mechanics for his new smokeless non-tobacco cigarette invention:
46 years later we now have the INSTEAD Electronic Cigarette 
Wow – that’s a new one on me! I wonder how this might affect Ruyan’s court cases against other electronic cigarette companies – and, potentially, against Philip Morris, if PM buys out Ruyan.
Kudos for digging this out! Any chance of sharing the source of the image and the info?
It is very nice to be patriotic, but this article is misleading. Gilbert design AN electronic cigarette, not THE electronic cigarette.
While Herbert Gilbert’s and Hon Lik’s devices share the same name, look similar on the outside and both use a battery, they actually function very differently and produce different results. Gilbert’s device is designed to heat air, which is then sucked through a flavored filter and produces no visible vapor. Lik’s design heats a liquid until it becomes a visible, inhaled vapor – which is how all of our e-cigarettes function today. Therefore, Lik is considered by most to be the inventor of the modern e-cigarette.
Gilbert was definitely a man ahead of his time and on the right track, but he is not the inventor of modern e-cigarettes anymore than Sony is considered the inventor of the iPod just because they came up with the idea of a compact personal music player first. While both inventions are small, rectangular, deliver music through a headset and run on batteries, the Walkman and the iPod function very differently – just as Gilbert’s design functioned very differently from Lik’s – so no one considers Sony the inventor of the iPod.
Hon Lik deserves the credit he gets for being the inventor of the e-cigarette design we use today.