THE HISTORY OF ATOMIZERS
What is the history of e-cigarettes?
Who invented the vape?
What was the original purpose of vaping?
How did vaping start?
Where was vaping invented?
When was vaping invented?
When was vaping introduced to the market?
When did vaping become popular?
Are there any dangers of vaping?
Vaping introduction - Vaping summary
I have come across dozens of articles on the history of vaping. Unfortunately, those writers apparently jumped into vaping a long time after Golden Greek started to kick off in the vaping world.
I have always wanted to provide the public with information about the true history of vaping, which began just some years before The Golden Greek emerged.
In 2003, a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik produced the first modern electronic cigarette that had the external appearance of an actual one, none other than the renowned "901 e-cigarette". A thin white cylindric battery, at the end of which there was a colored led, that lighted up once you inhaled and a cartridge on the other end that resembled a cigarette filter. The device was working with PG or VG and you had to refill the cartridge every 4-5 inhales.
The big revolution οn vaping
Trog, from the UK, introduced the very first mod named "screwdriver". This mod was made by a body of a flashlight where Trog was connecting a button and a connector that he was buying from a China store. After that, he was soldering some wires on the connector and on the button.
The mod was very popular among vapers that joined the "ECF", (electronic cigarette forum) witch by the way was the very first forum made for electronic cigarettes. ECF was the most popular forum around the world those days, so popular that almost all vapers joined it or were reading it. ECF in reality spread the word of mods around the world.
Golden Greek established at 2009 when Imeo (the guy behind Golden Greek) decided to make a different mod than "screwdriver". A mod that was wire-free, a real mechanical mod, a mod made from scratch in a CNC machine shop, a mod that gave to users the freedom to disassemble and assemble it until the last bolt. The company also gave the ability to users to repair the mod by themselves, by making spare parts for it so when a part was failing, the user could buy a new spare and simply replace the failed one. This mod was named GG Grant.
GG Grant was a mod made of an aluminum cylinder with one cap on its one end and one more cap on its other end. A button close to the one of the caps was firing an atomizer that was attached to the other cap of the mod.
In those days, the atomizers were all made in China. They were small and thin metal constructions made by a cylindric tube that had a 901 connector on their one end, a resistance inside the metal tube that was warming a silica rope, and a metal mesh that was keeping silica wet. Inside the drip tip, there was a material made of glass wool that was holding some liquid. This glass wool was touching the metal mesh. Silica rope that was inside the coil, (exactly like on present constructions where the cotton is inside a coil) was absorbing the liquid via the metal mesh (which was also absorbing liquid through the glass wool) so the liquid was evaporated by the resistance. Every 4-5 inhales we had to pull off the drip tip and put some more drops of liquid inside it, otherwise, we were experiencing a burned taste similar to the bad taste we feel when our atomizers run out of the liquid.
Later we started dripping directly inside the atomizer, eliminating the glass wool inside the drip tip.
After Golden Greek made its first mod named GG Grant, the company started thinking of new ways to improve their devices. The company produced the GGTS that was thicker than the GG Grant device, able to carry bigger batteries. It was similar to the GG Grant mod but more efficient.
GGTS was and still is a very beautiful device with brass accents (on both of its caps) and a brass button.
One year after Golden Greek joined the vaping world, another company named Super-T also did the same. The guy behind the company was named David, a machinist from the USA that was making similar to GG and also beautiful devices. A little later more companies like Altsmoke came to the market producing the "silver bullet" among other companies like Totally Wicked and Halo that manufactured liquids. Five pawns liquids company came into play just a little later, at 2012.
In those days Golden Greek and Super-T companies were silently competing with each other and every one of those companies was trying to make an even better device. Super-T for example invented the drip tip and the adjustable air for the 801 atomizers (similar to the 901 atomizers but bigger and with different connector's threads). Golden Greek on the other hand was working more quickly and more efficient, publishing much more inventions like:
Regarding Mods:
the mechanical e-cig itself
the mechanical button
all kinds of mechanical adapters (510, 801, 901)
the mechanical adapters with moving pin
the slimmest e-cig ever made (GGSlim)
the lock button option
the engraving
the Telescopic Mod that is compatible with all kinds of batteries
the high voltage vaping
the e-cig in sections
the removable button
the 4 in 1 connector
the passthrough
the wall plug
the cartomizer ready connector
the 2 tone e-cig (brass and aluminum)
the fuse that melts in case of a short circuit
the automatically adjustable center pin to fit all atomizers
the magnetic button
the button with adjusted path
the air control for all types of connections
the hybrid mode
the spring-loaded applications
and of course the temperature control (patented)
Regarding Feeding Systems:
the AFS (Automatic Feeding System)
the HV atomizers
the liquid collector tank
the liquid control with stopper
the atomizer in sections
the first gravity-based fed atomizer with a bell
the twisted resistance wires
the telescopic mouthpiece
the moving posts to accept short or long wires
the BF tank
the zirconium wire
the springomizer
the system to avoid overflow after refilling
the spitback protection
2 years after Super-T joined the vaping market, David (the founder of the company) decided to stop producing mods because of his own reasons. At that time, the Golden Greek company in April of 2012 invented and patented in Greece the Temperature Control and was also trying to construct the electronic part to support their new invention. Its name was V.I.R. The construction lasted 2 years and at the end of 2014 (1 month before DNA introduce their own temperature control), they brought it to the market inside a small and slim vaping device, called Proteus. The electronic part didn't have any wires and it was very small and also removable from its metal housing. Its button was also mechanical and wireless. It still is a unique piece of PCBA that no one managed to make something similar.
At around 2010, box mods and squonkers (the squonkers came just a little later) appeared on the market. They had a small audience but later more people got interested in mods like these. The first company that started was REO mods. At 2010, the first coil was made by Carlos. Carlos modified a standard China atomizer and put his own coil inside. At that time most people were thinking that atomizers were carrying electronics.
Also, a company named Provape started making their own electronic cigarette that was similar to existing mechanical cylindric mods but it was carrying an electronic part that was giving the user the ability to increase or decrease the voltage of the device. A wonderful construction that started the evolution of electronics on vaping. The company stopped its activities after around 7 years. The reason behind this decision was the FDA organization that asked a huge amount of money from the modders to continue with their constructions. The company decided it was not worth it.
Around 2011-2012 another company appeared on the vaping scene and it was called evolv. The company was making an electronic mod called Darwin. It was a box mod that was carrying an electronic part that was giving the ability to the end-user to increase or decrease the watts of the device (instead of the "volts method" that provari was using at that time). The mod became popular because of this reason. Later, the "watts adjustment method" became the norm in the vaporization industry until Golden Greek introduced the temperature control method.
The temperature control method was a completely new method of evaporation where an electronic board controlled the value of the resistor continuously during inhalation, and when the resistor reached a certain value, the electronic was cutting off the power supply so as to avoid the sensation of burned cotton.
The history of atomizers was almost the same. In 2010 a German guy produced the Bulli A1, a thin atomizer that was using a coil attached by bolts on two metallic posts. The atomizer was requiring dripping but later the company put a small plastic tank (at 1ml liquid capacity) inside the atomizer's body, that was feeding a silica rope.
At that time, Golden Greek produced Iatty, a real atomizer tank that was holding 5ml of liquid and finally eliminated the need for dripping.
But the real evolution came with the production of Odysseus, made by Golden Greek. Odysseus positioned the deck to the bottom of the construction with a bell upon it, so the liquid was feeding the resistance via gravity. It also used a top refilling cap method and the most important was that it was carrying the feature of liquid control. All these inventions made Odysseus the most popular atomizer among vapers. The rest of the atomizers are made exactly the same way until today.
Odysseus was using a resistance wire as a heating element to evaporate liquid absorbed by the silica rope but also two no-resistance wires that were connected on the two edges of the resistance wire. That way only the resistance wire was heating.
Odysseus was also carrying a ceramic part inside its deck to increase the vapor's taste.
One month after the presentation of Odysseus, Svoe Mesto was the company that produced an atomizer called Kayfun. It was an atomizer similar to Odysseus but with 4 differences: No liquid control, no top cap refilling method, no ceramic, no use of no-resistance wire. Kayfun became very popular among vapers because it didn't use no-resistance but only resistance wire, exactly like Bulli A1 atomizer, so it was easier for the vaper to construct its own coil. 1-2 years after Odysseus revolution, a new style of atomizers appeared to the market, called "genesis atomizers". The difference with the cotton style atomizers was the fact that they were using oxidised stainless steel mesh instead of cotton as a wicking method. The mesh wick was a folded squared piece of mesh. The result was a small piece of metal cylinder at around 2-3 cm in lenfth and around 2mm in width. The stainless steel mesh is a conductive material, so we had to oxidise it by torching it with a torch and then put it in cold water. That way, the thin layer of the oxidation prevent current to flow on the surface of the mesh, so we could wrap the coil around it. Fortunaterly those atomizers dissapear from the market because they were very unhealthy, due to the fact that were leaching the oxidation inside the liquid we were vaping and thats why our company never made an atomizer like this.
After that, China came to play. Unfortunately, they destroyed modders with their direct copies. Later they started making their own constructions, based on modders' thoughts.
During the years, more inventions came to the market and most of them were Golden Greek constructions. That doesn't mean that Golden Greek was the only company that was inventing things. Other companies did the same by inventing the drippers and the squonkers (squonkers by the way was an earlier invention of another company that was established in 2010 (if I remember well). We must not forget the atomizers that used ceramic as a wicking method. Fortunately those atomizers dissapear quickly from the market because they were very unhealthy. Golden Greek company never made something like this because we already knew about the danger of use ceramics as a wicking method.
These ceramics are porous to absorb liquid, so they are very thin and very easy to break. When they break, the small particles get directly into your lungs by inhalation. You should know that ceramic water filters have been taken off the market simply because they release small particles that go directly into our digestive system, making the water much less healthy than tap water. Now imagine these particles entering our inhalation system, which is much more sensitive than our digestive system. In fact, Golden Greek was the only company that was mentioning always the dangers when something new was appearing on the market like the burned wires, the ceramic coils, mesh coils, the myth that plating increases the conductivity, the danger of Ni200 wires, etc.
Another thing that we have to mention are the reviewers. They started reviewing vaping products almost immediately after the Golden Greek started making mods. Reviewing mods and atomizers became a norm on vaping evolution. People like Philgood, Igetcha69, Qorax Stan, George Batareykin, Mike Godwin, Todd, Busardo, and many others started doing reviews of all kinds of electronic vaping devices. Later, some of them became modders by making collaborations with China factories.
I personally vape for about 10 years. I don't have any side effects, I feel strong as if I was 30 years old, (I am 52), I do not cough anymore, I do not snore anymore, I recently went up and down 5.100 steps, and generally, I feel strong like a mule.
The vaping community is still growing. We all hope that this growth will never stop and it will continue saving human lives. We will always work to spread the word about vaping around the world.
Be always well and stay healthy.