Pipe History
The oldest tracks of smoking pipes were found on the bas-reliefs of Mayan temple, from the VIth century, but they where certainly used for magical or religious ceremonials.
Some remnants of pipes where found in oldest Romains cities, but analyses reveals they where used for medicinal smoking usage.
The historians agree to locate the appearance of tobacco and pipe on the North American continent in the various Indian tribes,
in particular the Sioux, with the calumet or the “petum”, looking like a big cigar made of tobacco leaf rolled on her even.
It will be necessary to wait for Christopher Columbus to make discover the tobacco to Europe,
first as a medicinal plant, before knowing a popular success which extends all the world.
In Europe, smoking pipe manufacturing begins in 1575 in England to Broseley with earth pipes imitating those imported from the New World who are not any more enough to feed the European market. Afterward, iron or silver pipes where build to give more durability for soldiers at war. In 1617, craftsman William Baernelz creates the first pipe factory to Gouda and markets his earth pipes all in Europe.
In France factories of Dunkerque, Saint-Malo and Marseille appears.
First wooden pipes appears during the XVIIth siecle to Ulm, and first pipe craftsman’s stay in Saint-Claude (France)
during the XVIIIth siecle, but we must wait until 1802 to see the first briar pipe crafted by Ulysse Courrieu,
a simple farmer from south of France.
From there, greatest European pipe craftsman’s were born: on 1858 Creation of the factory Butz-Choquin to Saint Claude, on 1876 Creation of the factory Savinelli in Milan, on 1900 Creation of the factory Vauen in Nuremberg, on 1906 Alfred Dunhill creates his first pipe for a motorist, on 1947 creation of the factory Castello near Como, on 1950 W.O.Larsen creates its first pipes, on 1951 Sixten Ivarsson opens his workshop in Copenhagen, on 1975 Karl Heinz Joura makes his first pipes …
Pipes from Marseille
Marseille, great harbor for exchange and sales, open on Mediterranean sea from antique world, sees passing in transit any kind of sailors, and with them,
quite sorts of objects. Frioul Island in the gulf of Marseille was used as quarantine for Middle East boats coming here
and the « pipe creek » is full of old pipes thrown here by sailors…
But Marseille also was a prosperous city 
and had its part in the European tobacco pipe production. Of 1693, with the Royal Pipes Factory until 1956, date of the closure of the last earth Pipes Factory, two and a half centuries passed by, that is 263 years.
Their names where Christophe Chabert, Louis Coulomb, Henri Rester, Guillaume Blanc, Louis Marius Bernard, Jean-Baptiste Morelli, G.Blanc de Plumier, Etienne Vautrain, Félix Mazet, Antoine Izouard ou Alphone Bonnaux, Hippolyte, Marius Joseph…
and they were « earth pipe craftsman’s » in Marseille.
Electronic Pipes
The unreasoned increase of tobacco consuming during last years, more often through cigarette, but also over consuming, over eating and sedentarily increases cardio-vascular deases and cancers. Last 50 years, 
tobacco looses his first interest: A product to be moderately consumed to favor moments of relaxation.
Researchers thus wanted to find a substitute who adapts better vicissitudes of the modern life: the electronic cigarette. Although a patent was deposited in Europe in the sixties, the real marketing of systems producing an “artificial smoke” was born only in the early 2000s, in china, with objects looking like cigarette.
Nowadays, the electronic cigarettes take very diverse forms, cylindrical
forms of more or less big diameter and length, cubicle forms (box),
or chichas and other electronic pipes.
They’re based on electronic circuits always more sophisticated,
but certain purists still appreciate the mechanical models,
devoid of electronic assistance.
