One of the First Electric Coffee Mills
Another electric-fuel-machine patent was granted in the United States to Robert H. Talbutt, of Baltimore, in 1911. This machine had the electric heater in the center of the roasting cylinder. An electrically heated machine called the Ben Franklin was demonstrated in New York in 1918.
In 1919, Everett T. Shortt, Dallas, Tex., was granted a United States patent on an electrical roaster.
Up to the present writing, no great progress has been made in the United States with the roasting of coffee by electric heat.
The Phoenix Electrical Heating Co. manufactured, and the Uno Company, Ltd., of London, marketed an electrically heated roaster as far back as 1909. The machine was not altogether satisfactory, even to the makers; and the Uno Company is now (1922) experimenting with a new type of electric roaster which it expects will remedy the defects of the early machine. The 1909 roaster was made of two concentric cylinders revolving around a set of fixed heating elements, consisting of a series of spiral wires held in position on fireproof clay insulators, these wires being assembled, insulated, and brought out through the fixed center to a terminal, or a set of terminals, at one end. In this way, no contact brushes or rings were needed. The machine had a sampling device at one end which threw out a few berries each time it was operated. It was not possible to return these sample berries. Such an arrangement appeared necessary, however, unless one was prepared to have the heating element on the outside of the machine and to pick up the current by means of rings or brushes. When the operator became accustomed to the coffee he was roasting, this was not a matter of great moment, because in England, at least, the average coffee roaster does not require a testing sample until he is about ready to turn out and to cool the roast.
| English Electric-Fuel Roaster | Ben Franklin Electric Coffee Roaster |
The Uno machine had a capacity of seven pounds, and the time occupied in roasting was from eight to ten minutes, depending on whether the roaster had been freshly switched on or had been running for a few minutes. The wattage was 5,520. The consumption per hundred-weight was under thirteen units. The makers gave, as the most economical pressure on which to work, 220 to 240 volts. The machine was operated for eighteen months in the show window of a London retail grocer.
In 1921, a United States patent was granted to Mark T. Seymour, Stowe, N.Y., on an electric coffee and peanut roaster, which has the heating element embedded in a cement-lined cylinder that contains a roasting cage.