PREPARING GREEN COFFEE FOR MARKET
Early Arabian methods of preparation—How primitive devices were replaced by modern methods—A chronological story of the development of scientific plantation machinery, and the part played by British and American inventors—The marvelous coffee package, one of the most ingenious in all nature—How coffee is harvested—Picking—Preparation by the dry and the wet methods—Pulping—Fermentation and washing—Drying—Hulling; or peeling, and polishing—Sizing, or grading—Preparation methods of different countries
La Roque[316], in his description of the ancient coffee culture, and the preparation methods as followed in Yemen, says that the berries were permitted to dry on the trees. When the outer covering began to shrivel, the trees were shaken, causing the fully matured fruits to drop upon cloths spread to receive them. They were next exposed to the sun on drying-mats, after which they were husked by means of wooden or stone rollers. The beans were given a further drying in the sun, and then were submitted to a winnowing process, for which large fans were used.
Development of Plantation Machinery
The primitive methods of the original Arab planters were generally followed by the Dutch pioneers, and later by the French, with slight modifications. As the cultivation spread, necessity for more effective methods of handling the ripened fruit mothered inventions that soon began to transform the whole aspect of the business. Probably the first notable advance was in curing, when the West Indian process, or wet method, of cleaning the berries was evolved.
About the time that Brazil began the active cultivation of coffee, William Panter was granted the first English patent on a "mill for husking coffee." This was in 1775. James Henckel followed with an English patent, granted in 1806, on a coffee drier, "an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner." The first American to enter the lists was Nathan Reed of Belfast, Me., who in 1822 was granted a United States patent on a coffee huller. Roswell Abbey obtained a United States patent on a huller in 1825; and Zenos Bronson, of Jasper County, Ga., obtained one on another huller in 1829. In the next few years many others followed.
John Chester Lyman, in 1834, was granted an English patent on a coffee huller employing circular wooden disks, fitted with wire teeth. Isaac Adams and Thomas Ditson of Boston brought out improved hullers in 1835; and James Meacock of Kingston, Jamaica, patented in England, in 1845, a self-contained machine for pulping, dressing, and sorting coffee.
William McKinnon began, in 1840, the manufacture of coffee plantation machinery at the Spring Garden Iron Works, founded by him in 1798 in Aberdeen, Scotland. He died in 1873; but the business continues as Wm. McKinnon & Co., Ltd.
About 1850 John Walker, one of the pioneer English inventors of coffee-plantation machinery, brought out in Ceylon his cylinder pulper for Arabian coffee. The pulping surface was made of copper, and was pierced with a half-moon punch that raised the cut edges into half circles.
The next twenty years witnessed some of the most notable advances in the development of machinery for plantation treatment, and served to introduce the inventions of several men whose names will ever be associated with the industry.