Abstract: Apparatus for making perforations in a running web of wrapping material for tobacco or filter rods or in the wrappers of discrete cigarettes has a carbon dioxide laser with two parallel resonators which are mechanically coupled to each other to define a U-shaped resonance chamber and the free ends of which carry partially transmitting mirrors for the passage of discrete active beams of coherent radiation. The two active beams are thereupon split into pairs of split beams and the split beams are focused upon the running web of wrapping material or upon the wrappers of successive rod-shaped articles to simultaneously form four rows of perforations.