All About Coffee Part 121

Nineteenth century]

In 1779, Richard Dearman was granted an English patent on a new method of making mills for grinding coffee. In 1798, the first American patent on an improved coffee grinding mill was granted to Thomas Bruff, Sr. It was a wall mill, fitted with iron plates, in which the coffee was ground between two circular nuts, three inches broad and having coa.r.s.e teeth around their centers and fine shallow teeth at the edges.

De Belloy's (or Du Belloy's) coffee pot appeared in Paris about 1800. It was first made of tin; but later, of porcelain and silver--the original French drip pot. This device was never patented; but it appears to have furnished the inspiration for many inventors in France, England, and the United States. The first French patent on a coffee maker was granted to Den.o.be, Henrion, and Rouch in 1802. It was for a "pharmacological-chemical coffee-making device by infusion." Charles Wyatt obtained a patent the same year in London on an apparatus for distilling coffee. The De Belloy pot is ill.u.s.trated on page 622.

In 1806, Hadrot was granted a French patent on a device "for filtering coffee without boiling and bathed in air." This use of the word filtering was misleading, as it was many times after in French, English, and American patent nomenclature, where it often meant percolation or something quite different from filtration. True percolation means to drip through fine interstices of china or metal. Filtration means to drip through a porous substance, usually cloth or paper. De Belloy's pot was a percolator. So was Hadrot's. The improvement on which Hadrot got his patent was to "replace the white iron filter (sic) used in ordinary filtering pots by a filter composed of hard tin and bis.m.u.th" and to use "a rammer of the same metal, pierced with holes." The rammer was designed to press down and to smooth out the powdered coffee in an even and uniform fashion. "It also," says Hadrot in his specification, "stops the derangement which boiling water poured from a height can produce. It is held by its stem a half inch from the surface of the powder so that it receives only the action of the water which it divides and facilitates thus the extraction which it must produce in each of the particles."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROASTER

Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute, Salem, Ma.s.s.]

A coffee percolator was invented in Paris about 1806 by Benjamin Thompson, F.R.S., an American-British scientist, philanthropist, and administrator. He was known as Count Rumford, a t.i.tle bestowed on him by the Pope. Rumford's invention was first given to the public in London in 1812. He has gained great credit for his device, because of an elaborate essay that he wrote on it in Paris under the t.i.tle of _The excellent qualities of coffee and the art of making it in the highest perfection_, and that he caused to be published in London in 1812. It was a simple percolator pot provided with a hot-water jacket, and was a real improvement on the French drip or percolator coffee pot invented by De Belloy, but not at all unlike Hadrot's patented device. Count Rumford, however, was a picturesque character, and a good advertiser. He is generally credited with the invention of the coffee percolator; but examination of his device shows that, strictly speaking, the De Belloy pot was just as much a percolator, and apparently antedated it by about six years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ORIGINAL FRENCH DRIP POT

_Cafetiere a la_ De Belloy]

De Belloy employed the principle of having the boiling water drip through the ground coffee when held in suspension by a perforated metal or porcelain grid. This is true percolation. Hadrot did the same thing with the improvements noted above. Count Rumford in his essay admits that this method of making coffee was not new, but claims his improvement was. This was to provide a rammer for compressing the ground coffee in the upper or percolating device into a definite thickness, this being accomplished by providing the perforated circular tin disk water-spreader that rested on the ground coffee with four projections, or feet, that kept the spreader within half an inch of the grid holding the powder in suspension and free from "agitation."

His argument was that two-thirds of an inch of ground coffee should be leveled and compressed into a half-inch thickness before the boiling water was introduced. Practically the same result was achieved in the De Belloy and Hadrot pots, also provided with water-spreaders and pluggers, but the same mathematical exact.i.tude in the matter of the depth of the ground coffee before the percolation started was not a.s.sured. De Belloy's spreader did not have the projections on the under side upon which Count Rumford laid such stress. Then there was the hot-water jacket, which was an improvement on Hadrot's hot air bath. Inventors that followed Rumford have made light of the importance that he attached to scientific accuracy in coffee-making; but it is interesting to note how many of the features of the De Belloy, Hadrot, and Rumford pots have been retained in the modern complex coffee machines, and in most of the filtration devices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BELGIAN, RUSSIAN, AND FRENCH PEWTER SERVING POTS

These are in the Metropolitan Museum and are of nineteenth century design]

French inventors continued to apply themselves to coffee-roasting and coffee-making problems, and many new ideas were evolved. Some of these were improved upon by the Dutch, the Germans, and the Italians; but the best work in the line of improvements that have survived the test of time was done in England and the United States.

In 1815, Sene was granted a French patent on "a device to make coffee without boiling." In 1819, Laurens produced the original of the percolation device in which the boiling water is raised by a tube and sprayed over the ground coffee. The same year Morize, a Paris tinsmith and lamp-maker, followed with a reversible, double drip pot which was the pioneer of all the reversible filtration pots of Europe and America.

Gaudet, another tinsmith, in 1820, patented an improvement on the percolator idea, that employed a cloth filter. By 1825, the pumping percolator, working by steam pressure and by partial vacuum, was much used in France, Holland, Germany, and Austria.

Meanwhile, it was common practise to roast coffee in England in "an iron pan or in hollow cylinders made of sheet iron"; while in Italy, the practise was to roast it in gla.s.s flasks, which were fitted with loose corks. The flasks were "held over clear fires of burning coals and continually agitated." Anthony Schick was granted an English patent in 1812, on a method, or process, for roasting coffee; but as he never filed his specifications, we shall probably never know what the process was. The custom of the day in England was to pound the roasted beans in a mortar, or to grind them in a French mill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COUNT RUMFORD'S PERCOLATOR]

In 1822, Louis Bernard Rabaut was granted an English patent in which the French drip process was reversed by using steam pressure to force the boiling water upward through the coffee ma.s.s. Ca.s.seneuve, a Paris tinsmith, seems to have patented practically the same idea in France in 1824. Ca.s.seneuve employed a paper filter in his machine.

In America, a United States patent was granted in 1813 to Alexander Duncan Moore of New Haven on a mill "for grinding and pounding coffee."

This was followed by a patent granted to Increase Wilson, of New London, in 1818, on a steel mill for grinding coffee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEWTER POTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Left to right, they are German, Flemish, English, and Dutch specimens in the Metropolitan Museum]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PATENT DRAWINGS OF EARLY FRENCH COFFEE MAKERS

Left, drip pot of 1806--Next two, Durant's inner-tube pot, 1827--Next (fourth), Gandais' first practicable percolator, 1827--Right, Grandin & Crepeaux' percolator, 1832]

In 1815, Archibald Kenrich was granted a patent in England on "mills for grinding coffee."

The coffee biggin, said to have been invented by a Mr. Biggin, came into common use in England for making coffee about 1817. It was usually an earthenware pot. At first it had in the upper part a metal strainer like the French drip pots. Suspended from the rim in later models there was a flannel or muslin bag to hold the ground coffee, through which the boiling water was poured, the bag serving as a filter. The idea was an adaptation of the French fustian infusion bag of 1711, and of other early French drip and filtration devices, and it attained great popularity. Any coffee pot with such a bag fitted into its mouth came to be spoken of as a coffee biggin. Later, there was evolved the metal pot with a wire strainer subst.i.tuted for the cloth bag. The coffee biggin still retains its popularity in England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY FRENCH FILTRATION DEVICES

Left, Ca.s.seneuve's filter-paper machine, 1824--Center, Gaudet's cloth-filter pot, 1820--Right, Raparlier's percolator]

While French inventors were busy with coffee makers, English and American inventors were studying means to improve the roasting of the beans. Peregrine Williamson, of Baltimore, was granted the first patent in the United States for an improvement on a coffee roaster in 1820. In 1824, Richard Evans was granted a patent in England for a commercial method of roasting coffee, comprising a cylindrical sheet-iron roaster fitted with improved f.l.a.n.g.es for mixing; a hollow tube and trier for sampling coffee while roasting; and a means for turning the roaster completely over to empty it.

The next year, 1825, the first coffee-pot patent in the United States was granted to Lewis Martelley of New York. It marked the first American attempt to perfect an arrangement to condense the steam and the essential oils and to return them to the infusion. In 1838, Antoni Bencini, of Milton, N.C., was granted a similar patent in the United States. Rowland, in 1844, and Waite and Sener, in their Old Dominion pot of 1856, tried for the same result, namely, the condensation of the steam in upper chambers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY AMERICAN COFFEE-MAKER PATENTS

Left, Waite & Sener's Old Dominion pot--Right, Bencini's steam condenser]

The French meantime focused on coffee makers; and in 1827, Jacques Augustin Gandais, a manufacturer of plated jewelry in Paris, produced a really practicable pumping percolator. This machine had the ascending steam tube on the exterior. The same year, 1827, Nicholas Felix Durant, a manufacturer in Chalons-sur-Marne, was granted a French patent on a percolator employing for the first time an inner tube for spraying the boiling water over the ground coffee.

In 1828, Charles Parker, of Meriden, Conn., began work on the original Parker coffee mill, which later was to bring him fame and fortune.

The next year, 1829, the first French patent on a coffee mill was issued to Colaux & Cie. of Molsheim.

That same year, 1829, the etabliss.e.m.e.nts Lauzaune, Paris, began to make hand-turned iron-cylinder coffee-roasting machines.

In 1831, David Selden was granted a patent in England for a coffee-grinding mill having cones of cast-iron.

The first Parker coffee-grinder patent for a household coffee and spice mill was issued in the United States in 1832 to Edmund Parker and Herman M. White of Meriden, Conn. The Charles Parker Company's business was founded the same year. In 1832 and 1833, United States patents were issued to Ammi Clark, of Berlin, Conn., also on improved coffee and spice mills for home use.

Amos Ransom, Hartford, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a coffee roaster in 1833.

The English began exporting coffee-roasting and coffee-grinding machinery to the United States in 1833-34.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH COFFEE MAKERS, NINETEENTH CENTURY

1, 2--Improved French drip pots. 3--Persian design. 4--De Belloy pot.

5--Russian reversible pot. 6--New filter machine. 7--Gla.s.s filter pot.

8--Syphon machine. 9--Vienna Incomparable. 10--Double gla.s.s "balloon"

device]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST ENGLISH COMMERCIAL COFFEE-ROASTER PATENT, 1824

Fig. 1--End elevation. Fig. 2--Front sectional view. Fig. 3--Front elevation, showing how the roasting cylinder was turned completely over to empty. Fig. 4--The examiner, or trier. Fig. 5--Tube (J) to be inserted in H of Fig. 6 to prevent escape of aroma]

It was not until 1836 that the first French patent was issued on a combined coffee-roaster-and-grinder to Francois Rene Lacoux of Paris.

The roaster was made of porcelain, because the inventor believed that metal imparted a bad taste to the beans while roasting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY FRENCH COFFEE-ROASTING MACHINES

1--Delephine's c.o.ke machine. 2--Bernard's machine, 1841. 3--Circlet for same. 4--Postulart's gas machine]

In 1839, James Vardy and Moritz Platow were granted an English patent on a kind of urn percolator employing the vacuum process of coffee making, the upper vessel being made of gla.s.s. The first French patent on a gla.s.s coffee-making device, using the same principle, was granted to Madame Va.s.sieux, of Lyons, in 1842. These were the forerunners of the double gla.s.s "balloons" for making coffee which later on, in the early part of the twentieth century, attained much vogue in the United States. They were very popular in Europe until the latter part of the nineteenth century.