In 1867, Jabez Burns was granted a United States patent on an improved coffee cooler, mixer, and grinding mill, or granulator. Another granulator patent was issued to him in 1872. Mr. Burns had also given the subject of cooling coffees considerable study, and his cooler was the result. He argued that it was necessary to cool quickly. Before his day, various methods had been employed, such as placing the coffee in revolving drums covered with wire cloth. Sometimes a draft of cold air was applied to the cooling drums, and the dirt and chaff blown through the wire cloth. It was also customary in wholesale establishments to blow cold air up through a perforated bottom, and this had been found effective when properly applied. The Burns idea was to cool by means of suction, causing a downward draft through the coffee and wire-cloth bottomed box, which was found to be more uniform and efficient for cooling purposes, as well as in controlling smoke, heat, and dust, which by this means could be blown out of the roasting room by any convenient outlet.
On the subject of grinding, likewise, Mr. Burns had reached some definite conclusions. The French and English lap and wall mills, the English steel mills, and the Swift mills were all used in the United States. Troemner's, the Enterprise, and others—to be mentioned later in chronological order—were extending their use in a retail way; but Jabez Burns confined his attention to a practicable mill for wholesale grinding establishments.
For manufacturing purposes, burstone mills were for many years exclusively employed, especially one first known as the Prentiss & Page, and later as the Page mill. There was a time when all the coffee establishments in New York sent their coffee to Prentiss & Page to be ground. Some of the places roasted by hand, others by horse power; and if by steam, it was limited, and they did not have enough to spare for grinding.
With the march of improvement, burstone mills went into the discard. The difficulty lay in finding men experienced in stone dressing to run them; and the demand grew for a better style of grinding than could be done in a mill out of face and balance. This demand was met in an altogether different style of machine, which for twenty-five years was well known as the Barbor mill. It was for improvements on this mill that Jabez Burns in 1867, 1872, and 1874 obtained his granulator patents.
The mill comprised cutters in the form of an iron roller running in near contact with a concave, also of iron, and a revolving cylinder provided with sieves, or screens, that received the ground material, rolled it over the wire surface, sifting out the fine and discharging the coarse automatically into the cutter, to be again manipulated until it was fine enough to pass through the meshes of the screen.
Jabez Burns patented an improved form of his roaster in 1881, and a sample-coffee roaster in 1883, before he died in 1888; and since that time his sons, who continue the business, have perfected a number of improvements and brought out new machines which will be referred to in chronological order.
James H. Nason, of Franklin, Mass., was granted a United States patent in 1865 on a percolator with fluid joints.
P.H. Vanderweyde, of Philadelphia, was granted United States patents in 1866 on a percolator and a continuous coffee-filtering machine.
Raparlier was granted a French patent on a pocket coffee-making device in 1867. In later years, his invention became very popular among French coffee drinkers. It was one of the early practicable forms of double-glass-globe filtration devices.
E.B. Manning of Middletown, Conn., was granted his first patent on a tea and coffee pot in 1868. Others followed in 1870 and 1876. In the latter year, John Bowman brought out the valve-type percolator which subsequently attained great favor in American households.