Why there is no single first coffee maker
The title of this article asks for a “first,” but the history of coffee brewing does not offer one. Coffee has been prepared by boiling ground beans in water for centuries, in pots such as the long-handled Middle Eastern and Turkish brewing pot. Later devices tried to solve different problems: removing the grounds, keeping the water from boiling too hard, or forcing hot water through coffee quickly. Various inventors in different countries worked on these, often independently, and many of the stories that circulate about them are better known than they are documented. What follows sticks to claims that are widely reported, with the usual caution.
Drip pots and filters
A pot that lets hot water pass slowly through a bed of grounds is usually called a drip pot. A device of this kind is often credited to a French cleric, Jean-Baptiste de Belloy, around 1800, and similar designs spread across France in the early nineteenth century. Early versions used a cloth bag or a perforated container for the grounds.
The paper filter came later. In 1908, Melitta Bentz, a German homemaker, received a patent for a filter using blotting paper in a brass cup, and she founded a business to sell it. The often-told detail that she used paper from her son’s school notebook is a retelling, but the patent and the company are real. The paper filter helped because it removed fine particles that cloth or metal mesh often let through. By the mid-twentieth century, electric machines were pouring hot water over a paper filter automatically. In the early 1970s such machines became common in American kitchens, and the design remains familiar today.
Percolators
A percolator circulates hot water repeatedly through the grounds. The basic idea of pumping water upward through a tube and letting it fall back over coffee appears in several nineteenth-century designs. Patents were issued in France and the United States in the 1800s, and the exact first design is disputed. Rumford, the scientist, is sometimes named in older accounts, but this is a hazy claim.
Percolators became popular in American homes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early models were stove-top, made of metal or glass. Electric percolators, with a heating element in the base, came with the early spread of home appliances. The percolator’s weak point is that continued circulation can over-extract the coffee, and tastes shifted to drip machines in later decades.
Vacuum or siphon pots
In the 1830s and 1840s, designs using steam pressure to push water between two chambers appeared, often described as vacuum or siphon pots. Their inventors are variously reported as German and French, and accounts differ. The technique used a glass vessel heated from below: expanding steam pushed water into an upper chamber with the coffee, and when the heat was removed the brewed liquid drew back down through a filter. These pots remained a specialty item rather than a household standard, but they have kept a following.
Espresso machines
Espresso machines use pressure to force hot water through finely ground coffee. The earliest patent that is commonly cited belongs to Angelo Moriondo of Turin, in 1884. His machine was a large bar-style device using steam and water, and it was shown at an exhibition. Later, around 1901, Luigi Bezzera patented improvements in Milan, and in 1905 Desiderio Pavoni bought the rights and began producing machines commercially. These early machines relied on steam pressure, which made the coffee taste burned to many drinkers.
The big change came after the Second World War, when a lever-operated piston machine, associated with Achille Gaggia in the late 1940s, used higher pressure and produced the foam layer known as crema. In the early 1960s, pump-driven machines with an electric motor made the process more consistent. Home espresso machines followed, though stove-top pots from Italy, such as the aluminum moka pot first patented in the 1930s, had already brought a coffee-pressure method into many kitchens.
Materials and appliances
Materials changed coffee makers as well. Early pots used tin, copper or glass. The cheap supply of aluminum from industrial smelting made lighter pots possible, and stainless steel gave machines a durable surface that did not hold flavors. Heat-resistant handles and bases used early plastics such as bakelite plastic. Later machines added thermostats, timers and keep-warm plates, becoming typical small appliances. The motor-driven pump in a modern espresso machine is a reminder that electric motors, not only heating elements, shaped kitchens.
The gaps in the record
The history of coffee makers has a lot of loose ends. Patents from the early nineteenth century are numerous but were not always for working devices. Retold stories about inventors, such as famous quotes or sudden insights, are rarely supported by sources. A careful summary is this: the drip pot, percolator, siphon and espresso machine each have separate roots, and no single person can be named as the maker of the first one. Even the question “first what?” depends on whether one means a brewing pot, an electric appliance or a pressure machine.