The American Tobacco Company. Fit for a Duke.

In 1885, James Buchanan Duke acquired a license to use the first automated cigarette making machine (invented by James Albert Bonsack), and by 1890, Duke supplied 40% of the American cigarette market (then known as pre-rolled tobacco). In that year, Duke consolidated control of his four major competitors under one corporate entity, the American Tobacco Company, which was a monopoly in the American cigarette market. Within two decades of its founding, the American Tobacco company absorbed about 250 companies and produced 80% of the cigarettes, plug tobacco, smoking tobacco, and snuff produced in the United States.

American Tobacco controlled the American trade, Imperial Tobacco controlled the trade in the British territories, and a third, cooperative venture named the British-American Tobacco Company was set up between the two to control the sale of tobacco in the rest of the world.

In 1906, the American Tobacco Company was found guilty of antitrust violations, and was ordered to be split into three separate companies: American Tobacco Company, Liggett and Myers, and the P. Lorillard Company.

In December 1924, Duke established The Duke Endowment, a $40 million trust fund (about $430 million in 2005 dollars), some of which was to go to Trinity College. The University was renamed Duke University in honor of his father.

Poor guy didn't look a thing like Gary Cooper though.