About the year 1817, the coffee biggin appeared in England. It was simply a squat earthenware pot with an upper, movable, strainer part made of tin, after the French drip pot pattern. Later models employed a cloth bag suspended from the rim of the pot. It was said to have been invented by a Mr. Biggin; and Dr. Murray, of dictionary fame, seems to have become convinced of this gentleman's existence, although others have doubted it and thought the name was of Dutch origin, the article having been first made for Holland. It has been suggested that, in all probability, the name came from the Dutch word beggelin, to trickle, or run down. One thing is certain, coffee biggins came originally from France; so that if there was a Mr. Biggin, he merely introduced them into England. The coffee biggin with which Americans are most familiar is a pot containing a flannel bag or a cylindrical wire strainer to hold the ground coffee through which the boiling water is poured. The Marion Harland pot was an improved metal coffee biggin. The Triumph coffee filter was a cloth-bag device which made any coffee pot a biggin.
In 1819, Morize, a Paris tinsmith, invented a double drip, reversible coffee pot. The device had two movable "filters" and was placed bottom up on the fire until the water boiled, when it was inverted to let the coffee "filter" or drip through.
In 1819, Laurens was granted a French patent on the original pumping-percolator device, in which the water was raised by steam pressure and dripped over the ground coffee.
In 1820, Gaudet, another Paris tinsmith, invented a filtration device that employed a cloth strainer.
In 1822, Louis Bernard Rabaut was granted an English patent on a coffee-making device in which the usual French drip process was reversed by the use of steam pressure to force the boiling water upward through the coffee mass. Caseneuve, of Paris, was granted a patent on a similar device in France in 1824.
In 1825, the first coffee-pot patent in the United States was granted to Lewis Martelley on a machine "to condense the steam and essential oils and return them to the infusion."
In 1827, the first really practicable pumping percolator, as we understand the meaning today, was invented by Jacques-Augustin Gandais, a manufacturer of plated jewelry in Paris. The boiling water was raised through a tube in the handle and sprayed over the ground coffee suspended in a filter basket, but could not be returned for a further spraying.
In 1827, Nicholas Felix Durant, a manufacturer of Chalons-sur-Marne, was granted a French patent on a "percolator" employing, for the first time, an inner tube to raise the boiling water for spraying over the ground coffee.
In 1839, James Vardy and Moritz Platow were granted an English patent on a kind of urn "percolator", or filter, employing the vacuum process of coffee making, the upper vessel being made of glass.
By this time, the pumping percolator, working by steam pressure and by partial vacuum, was in general use in France, England, and Germany. And then began the movement toward the next stage in coffee making—filtration.