REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY

in full R.j. Reynolds Tobacco Company, American manufacturer of tobacco products. The origins of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company date to the post-Civil War era, when Richard Joshua Reynolds (18501918) began trading in tobacco, first in his native Virginia and then in Winston, N.C., where in 1875 he established his first plug factory. In 1899 the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was incorporated, with Reynolds as president. The following year it entered the giant tobacco trust that came to be called the American Tobacco Company. In 1911 the trust was dissolved by the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Reynolds Tobacco Company again became independent. In 1906 the company introduced the popular Prince Albert pipe tobacco. In 1913 it introduced a new cigarette, a blend of American and Turkish tobaccos, called Camel. Winston filter tips went on sale in 1954, and Salem, the first filter-tipped menthol cigarette, was introduced in 1956. The company began to diversify in the 1960s, acquiring chiefly food and oil concerns, and the tobacco concern became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., in 1970 (since 1986 RJR Nabisco, Inc.).