All About Coffee - Part 145
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Part 145

1755--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Porto Rico from Martinique.

1760--Decoction, or boiling, of coffee in France is generally replaced by the infusion method.

1760--Joo Alberto Castello Branco plants in Rio de Janeiro the first coffee tree brought to Brazil from Goa, Portuguese India.

1761--Brazil exempts coffee from export duty.

1763--Donmartin, a tinsmith of St. Benoit, France, invents a novel coffee pot, the inside of which is "filled by a fine flannel sack put in its entirety." It has a tap to draw the coffee.

1764--Count Pietro Verri publishes in Milan, Italy, a philosophic and literary periodical, ent.i.tled _Il Caffe_ (the coffee house).

1765--Mme. de Pompadour's golden coffee mill is mentioned in her inventory.

1770--Complete revolution in style of English serving pots; return to the flowing lines of the Turkish ewer.

1770--Chicory is first used with coffee in Holland.

1770-73--Coffee cultivation begins in Rio, Mins, and So Paulo.

1771--John Dring is granted a patent in England for a compound coffee.

1774--Molke, a Belgian monk, introduces the coffee plant from Surinam into the garden of the Capuchin monastery at Rio de Janeiro.

1774--A letter is sent by the Committee of Correspondence from the Merchants' coffee house, New York, to Boston, proposing the American Union.

1777--King Frederick the Great of Prussia issues his celebrated coffee and beer manifesto, recommending the use of the latter in place of the former among the lower cla.s.ses.

1779--Richard Dearman is granted an English patent for a new method of making mills for grinding coffee.

1779--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Costa Rica from Cuba by the Spanish voyager, Navarro.

1781--King Frederick the Great of Prussia establishes state coffee-roasting plants in Germany, declares the coffee business a government monopoly, and forbids the common people to roast their own coffee. "Coffee-smellers" make life miserable for violators of the law.

1784--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Venezuela by seed from Martinique.

1784--A prohibition against the use of coffee, except by the rich, is issued by Maximilian Frederick, elector of Cologne.

1785--Governor Bowdoin of Ma.s.sachusetts introduces chicory to the United States.

1789--The first import duty on coffee, two and a half cents a pound, is levied by the United States.

1789--George Washington is officially greeted, April 23, as president-elect of the U.S. at the Merchants coffee house in New York.

1790--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Mexico from the West Indies.

1790--The first wholesale coffee-roasting plant in the United States begins operation at 4 Great Dock Street, New York.

1790--The first United States advertis.e.m.e.nt for coffee appears in the _New York Daily Advertiser._

1790--The import duty on coffee in the United States is increased to four cents a pound.

1790--The first crude package coffee is sold in "narrow mouthed stoneware pots and jars," by a New York merchant.

1792--The Tontine coffee house is established in New York.

1794--The import duty on coffee in the United States is increased to five cents a pound.

1798--The first United States patent for an improved coffee-grinding mill is granted to Thomas Bruff, Sr.

1800[L]--Chicory comes into use in Holland as a subst.i.tute for coffee.

1800[L]--De Belloy's coffee pot, made of tin, later of porcelain, appears--the original French drip coffee pot.

1800[L]-1900[L]--There is a return in England to the style of coffee-serving pot having the handle at right angle to the spout.

1802--The first French patent on a coffee maker is granted to Den.o.be, Henrion, and Rouch for "a pharmacological-chemical coffee making device by infusion."

1802--Charles Wyatt is granted a patent in London on an apparatus for distilling coffee.

1804[L]--The first cargo of coffee--and other East Indian produce--from Mocha, to be shipped in an American bottom, reaches Salem, Ma.s.s.

1806--James Henckel is granted a patent in England on a coffee dryer, "an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner."

1806--The first French patent on an improved French drip coffee pot for making coffee by filtration, without boiling, is granted to Hadrot.

1806--The coffee percolator (really an improved French drip coffee pot) is invented by Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), an expatriated American scientist, in Paris.

1809--The first importation of Brazil coffee by the United States arrives at Salem, Ma.s.s.

1809--Coffee becomes an article of commerce in Brazil.

1811--Walter Rochfort, a London grocer and tea dealer, obtains a patent in London on a compressed coffee tablet.

1812--Coffee in England is roasted in an iron pan or hollow cylinder made of sheet iron; and then is pounded in a mortar, or ground in a hand-mill.

1812--Anthony Schick is granted an English patent on a method, or process, for roasting coffee, for which specifications were never enrolled.

1812--Coffee is roasted in Italy in a gla.s.s flask with a loose cork, held over a clear fire of burning coals and continually agitated.

1812--The import duty, on coffee in the United States is increased to ten cents a pound as a war-revenue measure.

1813--A United States patent is granted Alexander Duncan Moore, New Haven, Conn., on a mill for grinding and pounding coffee.

1814--A war-time fever of speculation in tea and coffee causes the citizens of Philadelphia to form a non-consumption a.s.sociation, each member pledging himself not to pay more than twenty-five cents a pound for coffee, and not to use tea unless it is already in the country.

1816--The import duty on coffee in the United States is reduced to five cents a pound.

1817[L]--The coffee biggin (said to have been invented by a man named Biggin) comes into common use in England.