Scanning Around With Gene: Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It

My dad smoked a pipe. I think everyone’s dad smoked a pipe. But none of my contemporaries smoke a pipe — at least not a tobacco pipe. Like all smoking, pipe smoking has taken a hit in recent years.
However, for many years, smoking a pipe was as much about image as it was about smoking. College professors with tweed jackets, contemplative individuals, maverick film directors — a pipe was, for many of them, an important prop. Click on any image for a larger view.



Historians say that Native Americans were the first to use pipes to smoke tobacco. Supposedly it was for ceremonial use, but we know how addictive tobacco can be, so it’s hard to say just what constituted “ceremony.” Tobacco and the various ways to smoke it were quickly adopted by European explorers and exported to the Continent.


Sir Walter Raleigh, an English poet and explorer, is often credited with popularizing tobacco use, though others certainly paved the way. Poor Sir Walter ended up with his head chopped off, so we don’t really know if his smoking resulted in any ill health effects.


And while Prince Albert tobacco used to be the butt of many childish crank calls, the husband of Queen Victoria of England was not a particularly avid pipe smoker. Besides a famous brand of pipe tobacco, Prince Albert had a lot of products, body modifications, lakes, and other things named after him.



What do goats and bears have to do with pipes? You’ll have to go to page 2 to find out.
Return to page 1 of “Scanning Around With Gene: Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It.”
It has been said that pipe smoking is less harmful than other forms of tobacco use. While that may be the case, I don’t really know. It does seem like pipe smokers spend much more time fiddling with the pipe, lighting the pipe, emptying the pipe, and filling the pipe than actually smoking it.


Puffing on a pipe is an art form. It can be a great substitute for conversation and buys time for anyone who needs to think a bit before replying to a question or statement. Pipe smokers are typically men of few words.



As a prop, pipes provide a wide variety of styles. There are classic pipes, ornately carved pipes, straight pipes, curved pipes, and pipes made from all different sorts of wood.



Pipe smoking seems particularly male, unless you count Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies television series. Unlike cigars, which have gained some female followers in recent times, it’s hard to find images of women smoking pipes.


I gather from these ads that a good pipe needs to be “broken in.” Some manufacturers even “pre-smoke” their pipes, taking out some of the “bite.”



It could be the tobacco pipe has had its day. I just hope there’s always at least one store in town where you can call and ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.

James Fritz is a Principal Program Manager: Content Tools and Workflows at LinkedIn.
  • Anonymous says:

    Are these mostly from the fifties and early sixties, Gene?

  • Anonymous says:

    Actually, more from the 40s and 50s with few exceptions. Sorry, I should have noted the dates for each one.

  • Anonymous says:

    Let him out!

  • Anonymous says:

    Well I don’t know whether comics count, but The intermittent steampunk comic of Lovelace & Babbage shows Ada smoking a pipe rather frequently.

    Can be found at:
    https://2dgoggles.com/

  • Demolition says:

    I fondly remember my Dad (and as you said, everyone else’s Dad) smoking a pipe back in the “old days”. When I was a little kid, I liked the way that the bowl got warm, so I’d always want to hold it. As you can imagine, that bugged my Dad quite a bit, but he was a tolerant sort.

    Nowadays, I personally know only two people who smoke pipes: one is an elderly fellow who was told to give up cigarettes by his doctor, so he started smoking a pipe (ha!); and the other is one of my pretentious younger (twenty-something) friends who thinks that smoking a pipe makes him look sophisticated. I don’t have the heart to tell him how ridiculous he looks. :-)

    Anyway, thanks again for the memories, Gene. A pleasure to read your column, as always.

  • Anonymous says:

    neat article, i don’t know who wrote it but thanks for finding all the cool old ads

  • Anonymous says:

    The image of the “Doctor” with row upon row of pipes being “presmoked” is one of the front-runners for the weirdest of Gene’s offerings to date–right up there with the “Land Yacht” of several months ago. If you dare to disagree, go to “The Treachery of Images” at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images>.

    I first heard the old Prince Albert joke from my mother about 55 years ago, and I thought it was the funniest thing I had heard to date in my young life (I was, maybe, ten). Still think so. So does Bart Simpson.

    Many thanks, Gene! I hope this all becomes a book some day soon.

  • Anonymous says:

    Oops, the web like I included seemed to have been stripped out. Simply go to the Wikipedia entry for “The Treachery of Images.”

  • Anonymous says:

    yes! and is your refrigerator running? Like some of us,
    that was an oldie but goodie.

  • Anonymous says:

    Hi did you make these images, or are they something that could be used (copyright). I have a project that I would love to use on of these as a reference for, please let me know! Thanks!

  • Anonymous says:

    fondly remember my Dad (and as you said, everyone else’s Dad) smoking a pipe back in the “old days”. When I was a little kid, I liked the way that the bowl got warm, so I’d always want to hold it. As you can imagine, that bugged my Dad quite a bit, but he was a tolerant sort. sesli sohbet sesli chat

  • Anonymous says:

    I think that pipe smoking may be on the comeback, as people realize what was old is new again.

    Moderation in all things………

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