Early French Coffee-Roasting Machines
1—Delephine's coke 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 glass. The first French patent on a glass coffee-making device, using the same principle, was granted to Madame Vassieux, of Lyons, in 1842. These were the forerunners of the double glass "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.
In 1839, John Rittenhouse, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States patent on a cast-iron mill designed to handle the problem of nails and stones in grinding coffee. His improvement was intended to prevent injury to the grinding teeth by stopping the machine.
In 1840, Abel Stillman, Poland, N.Y., was granted a United States patent on a family coffee roaster having a mica window to enable the operator to observe the coffee while roasting. ([See 10, page 630.])
In 1841, William Ward Andrews was granted an English patent on an improved coffee pot employing a pump to force the boiling water upward through the coffee, which was contained in a perforated cylinder screwed to the bottom of the pot. This was Rabaut's idea of nineteen years before. We find it again repeated in the United States in a machine which appeared on the New York market in 1906.
