Cost: Only $50 per year!! Refreshments are included

Benefit: Members receive a 19% discount (no 9% sales tax + 10%) on all pipes and pipe accessory purchases.

President:
Mike Axelrod
mikeaxelrod1@gmail.com
415-888-8103

Famous Pipe Smokers – Myths, Legends and Fact
By William Miller

When Mike Axelrod, president of our newly formed pipe club, asked me to write a regular submission to our newsletter, I thought immediately that it would be fun to highlight some famous pipe smoker in each edition.  I quickly discovered that there are many blogs and websites already doing this.  As I read them, however, I was left with many niggling questions about just where did all of this “information” come from and how much of it was real versus urban legend.  So I decided that doing a column on famous pipe smokers with that sort of twist might be somewhat unique and thus a bit more interesting to readers in our club. 

Each month I will try to answer a pipe related question about some famous puffer… living, departed or fictional.  Here are some questions I am already tackling:

• “Did Gandalf the Wizard really buy his tobacco from Frog Morton and who was Frog Morton anyway… was he really a frog?!?”
• “Did General MacArthur only smoke a corncob pipe and why?”
• “Why did Percival Lowell of astronomy fame refuse to have his picture taken unless he was holding his favorite brier?”
• “Did the famous Sherlock Holms really smoke a calabash… ever?”

So the inaugural question will be, “Did Einstein really smoke Revelation and how do we know that it was his ‘favorite’?”  So here we go…

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Regarding famous pipe smokers, there are probably more references to Einstein than any other character.  Interestingly, despite his clear love of pipe smoking, there really isn’t much actual information.  The vast majority of references are a justification of pipe smoking in general, claiming an association between his brilliance and the fact that he smoked a pipe.  We do know that he often would puff on his pipe while lecturing his Princeton students in physics, smoking in college classes being commonly accepted in the 1950’s.  Of course, there is the famous quote attributed to him on his induction into the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club in 1950, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” 

Figure 1. Einstein dreamily smoking a brier. One of his famous "thought experiments" or simply relaxing?

Einstein loved his pipe collection and cut a hole in his belt through which he always carried a pipe.  There is the anecdote of how he fell into the water while sailing (another one of his beloved hobbies), but managed to never loose the grip on his pipe.  Of the many photos of Einstein with a pipe, all the ones that I have found are with a brier.  So, perhaps we can deduce that he preferred briers over others such as Meerschaums.  One of his brier pipes is on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.  Another was sold at auction in 1995 for $20,000.

Figure 2, Einstein's pipe on display at the Smithsonian (from the NMAH website).

Revelation is a pipe tobacco blend started in the 1930’s by Philip Morris and Company that was producing a number of different blends using its burley tobacco as an ingredient.  From a magazine ad in 1963, “Revelation’s unique mixture pleases your taste with the flavor personalities of five choice tobaccos. It is simply more satisfying, more comforting than any single tobacco you can smoke. Make your next pipeful a Revelation.”  According to the ad, the five tobaccos were: Virginia Bright, Kentucky Burley, Old Pelt Bright, Latakia and Perique.

Figure 3. Tin of Revelation, ca. 1930's, being sold on eBay.

In the mid-1970’s Philip Morris sold the proprietary recipes for all of its tobacco blends to House of Windsor of Yoe, Pennsylvania.  The current production is presumably following the same recipe as when Einstein smoked it, but we don’t know for sure. The House of Windsor tin states, “A blend of Bright flake, Red Virginia, Burley cube cut, Latakia and Perique with a mild fruit flavor.”

Figure 4. Einstein with a tin of Revelation tobacco, ca. early 1950's.

As best I can tell, this picture is what has lead to the association of Revelation and Einstein.  The fact that he posed with it probably indicates that he was fond of the blend… most of what he did was thought through and thus it seems unlikely to have been merely random chance that he was holding this particular can with the label facing the camera unless it was important to him.  So in conclusion, I think we can say that he probably did smoke Revelation and probably liked it, but we can’t say that it was or was not his favorite.