THE EVOLUTION OF COFFEE APPARATUS Page 5

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 exactitude in the matter of the depth of the ground coffee before the percolation started was not assured. 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.

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, Sené 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 glass 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.

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 mass. Casseneuve, a Paris tinsmith, seems to have patented practically the same idea in France in 1824. Casseneuve 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.

Pewter Pots of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Left to right, they are German, Flemish, English, and Dutch specimens in the Metropolitan Museum