All About Coffee

1596[L]--Belli sends to the botanist de l'Écluse "seeds used by the Egyptians to make a liquid they call cave."

1598--The first printed reference to coffee in English appears as chaoua in a note of Paludanus in Linschoten's Travels, translated from the Dutch, and published in London.

1599--Sir Antony Sherley, first Englishman to refer to coffee drinking in the Orient, sails from Venice for Aleppo.

1600[L]--Pewter serving-pots appear.

1600--Iron spiders on legs, designed to sit in open fires, are used for roasting coffee.

1600[L]--Coffee cultivation introduced into southern India at Chickmaglur, Mysore, by a Moslem pilgrim, Baba Budan.[M]

1600-32--Mortars and pestles of wood, and of metal (iron, bronze, and brass) come into common use in Europe for making coffee powder.

1601--The first printed reference to coffee in English, employing the more modern form of the word, appears in W. Parry's book, Sherley's Travels, as "a certain liquor which they call coffe."

1603--Captain John Smith, English adventurer, and founder of the colony of Virginia, in his book of travels published this year, refers to the Turks' drink, "coffa."

1610--Sir George Sandys, the poet, visits Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine, and records that the Turks "sip a drink called coffa (of the berry that it is made of) in little china dishes, as hot as they can suffer it."

1614--Dutch traders visit Aden to examine into the possibilities of coffee cultivation and coffee trading.

1615--Pietro Della Valle writes a letter from Constantinople to his friend Mario Schipano at Venice that when he returns he will bring with him some coffee, which he believes "is a thing unknown in his native country."

1615--Coffee is introduced into Venice.

1616--The first coffee is brought from Mocha to Holland by Pieter Van dan Broecke.

1620--Peregrine White's wooden mortar and pestle (used for "braying" coffee) is brought to America on the Mayflower by White's parents.

1623-27--Francis Bacon, in his Historia Vitae et Mortis (1623), speaks of the Turks' "caphe"; and in his Sylva Sylvarum (1627) writes: "They have in Turkey a drink called coffa made of a berry of the same name, as black as soot, and of a strong scent ... this drink comforteth the brain and heart, and helpeth digestion."

1625--Sugar is first used to sweeten coffee in Cairo.

1632--Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy says: "The Turks have a drink called coffa, so named from a berry black as soot and as bitter."

1634--Sir Henry Blount makes a voyage to the Levant, and is invited to drink "cauphe" in Turkey.

1637--Adam Olearius, German traveler and Persian scholar, visits Persia (1633-39); and on his return tells how in this year he observed that the Persians drink chawa in their coffee houses.

1637--Coffee drinking is introduced into England by Nathaniel Conopios, a Cretan student at Balliol College, Oxford.

1640--Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum, publishes the first botanical description of the coffee plant in English--referred to as "Arbor Bon cum sua Buna. The Turkes Berry Drinke."

1640--The Dutch merchant, Wurffbain, offers for sale in Amsterdam the first commercial shipment of coffee from Mocha.

1644--Coffee is introduced into France at Marseilles by P. de la Roque, who brought back also from Constantinople the instruments and vessels for making it.

1645--Coffee comes into general use in Italy.

1645--The first coffee house is opened in Venice.

1647--Adam Olearius publishes in German his Persian Voyage Description, containing an account of coffee manners and customs in Persia in 1633-39.

1650[L]--Varnar, Dutch minister resident at the Ottoman Porte, publishes a treatise on coffee.

1650[L]--The individual hand-turned metal (tin-plate or tinned copper) roaster appears; shaped like the Turkish coffee grinder, for use over open fires.

1650--The first coffee house in England is opened at Oxford by Jacobs, a Jew.

1650--Coffee is introduced into Vienna.

1652--The first London coffee house is opened by Pasqua Rosée in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill.

1652--The first printed advertisement for coffee in English appears in the form of a handbill issued by Pasqua Rosée, acclaiming "The Vertue of the Coffee Drink."

1656--Grand Vizier Kuprili, during the war with Candia, and for political reasons, suppresses the coffee houses and prohibits coffee. For the first violation the punishment is cudgeling; for a second, the offender is sewn up in a leather bag and thrown into the Bosporus.

1657--The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appears in The Publick Adviser of London.

1657--Coffee is introduced privately into Paris by Jean de Thévenot.

1658--The Dutch begin the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon.

1660[L]--The first French commercial importation of coffee arrives in bales at Marseilles from Egypt.

1660--Coffee is first mentioned in the English statute books when a duty of four pence is laid upon every gallon made and sold "to be paid by the maker."

1660[L]--Nieuhoff, Dutch ambassador to China, is the first to make a trial of coffee with milk, in imitation of tea with milk.

1660--Elford's "white iron" machine for roasting coffee is much used in England, being "turned on a spit by a jack."

1662--Coffee is roasted in Europe over charcoal fires without flame, in ovens, and on stoves; being "browned in uncovered earthenware tart dishes, old pudding pans, fry pans."

1663--All English coffee houses are required to be licensed.

1663--Regular imports of Mocha coffee begin at Amsterdam.

1665--The improved Turkish long brass combination coffee grinder with folding handle and cup receptacle for green beans, for boiling and serving, is first made in Damascus. About this period the Turkish coffee set, including long-handled boiler and porcelain cups in brass holders, comes into vogue.

1668--Coffee is introduced into North America.

1669--Coffee is introduced publicly into Paris by Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador.

1670--Coffee is roasted in larger quantities in small closed sheet-iron cylinders having long iron handles designed to turn them in open fireplaces. First used in Holland. Later, in France, England, and the United States.

1670--The first attempt to grow coffee in Europe at Dijon, France, results in failure.

1670--Coffee is introduced into Germany.

1670--Coffee is first sold in Boston.

1671--The first coffee house in France is opened in Marseilles in the neighborhood of the Exchange.

1671--The first authoritative printed treatise devoted solely to coffee, written in Latin by Faustus Nairon, professor of Oriental languages, Rome, is published in that city.

1671--The first printed treatise in French, largely devoted to coffee, Concerning the Use of Coffee, Tea and Chocolate, by Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, purporting to be a translation from the Latin, is published at Lyons.

1672--Pascal, an Armenian, first sells coffee publicly at St. Germain's fair, Paris, and opens the first Parisian coffee house.

1672--Great silver coffee pots (with all the utensils belonging to them of the same metal) are used at St.-Germain's fair, Paris.

1674--The Women's Petition Against Coffee is published in London.

1674--Coffee is introduced into Sweden.

1675--Charles II issues a proclamation to close all London coffee houses as places of sedition. Order revoked on petition of the traders in 1676.

1679--An attempt by the physicians of Marseilles to discredit coffee on purely dietetic grounds fails of effect; and consumption increases at such a rate that traders in Lyons and Marseilles begin to import the green bean by the ship-load from the Levant.

1679[L]--The first coffee house in Germany is opened by an English merchant at Hamburg.

1683--Coffee is sold publicly in New York.

1683--Kolschitzky opens the first coffee house in Vienna.

1684--Dufour publishes at Lyons, France, the first work on The Manner of Making Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate.

1685--Café au lait is first recommended for use as a medicine by Sieur Monin, a celebrated physician of Grenoble, France.

1686--John Ray, one of the first English botanists to extol the virtues of coffee in a scientific treatise, publishes his Universal Botany of Plants in London.

1686--The first coffee house is opened in Regensburg, Germany.

1689--Café de Procope, the first real French café, is opened in Paris by François Procope, a Sicilian, coming from Florence.

1689--The first coffee house is opened in Boston.

1691--Portable coffee-making outfits to fit the pocket find favor in France.

1692--The "lantern" straight-line coffee pot with true cone lid, thumb-piece, and handle fixed at right angle to the spout, is introduced into England, succeeding the curved Oriental serving pot.

1694--The first coffee house is opened in Leipzig, Germany.

1696--The first coffee house (The King's Arms) is opened in New York.

1696--The first coffee seedlings are brought from Kananur, on the Malabar coast, and introduced into Java at Kedawoeng, near Batavia, but not long afterward are destroyed by flood.

1699--The second shipment of coffee plants from Malabar to Java by Henricus Zwaardecroon becomes the progenitors of all the arabica coffee trees in the Dutch East Indies.

1699--Galland's translation of the earliest Arabian manuscript on coffee appears in Paris under the title, Concerning the First Use of Coffee and the Progress It Afterward Made.

1700--Ye coffee house, the first in Philadelphia, is built by Samuel Carpenter.

1700-1800--Small portable coke or charcoal stoves made of sheet-iron, and fitted with horizontal revolving cylinders turned by hand, come into use for family roasting.

1701--Coffee pots appear in England with perfect domes and bodies less tapering.

1702--The first "London" coffee house is established in Philadelphia.

1704--Bull's machine for roasting coffee, probably the first to use coal for commercial roasting, is patented in England.

1706--The first samples of Java coffee, and a coffee plant grown in Java, are received at the Amsterdam botanical gardens.

1707--The first coffee periodical, The New and Curious Coffee House, is issued at Leipzig by Theophilo Georgi, as a kind of organ of the first kaffee-klatsch.

1711--Java coffee is first sold at public auction in Amsterdam.

1711--A novelty in coffee-making is introduced into France by infusing the ground beans in a fustian (linen) bag.

1712--The first coffee house is opened in Stuttgart, Germany.

1713--The first coffee house is opened in Augsburg, Germany.

1714--The thumb-piece on English coffee pots disappears, and the handle is no longer set at a right angle to the spout.

1714--A coffee plant, raised from seed of the plant received at the Amsterdam botanical gardens in 1706, is presented to Louis XIV of France, and is nurtured in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris.

1715--Jean La Roque publishes in Paris his Voyage de l'Arabie Heureuse (voyage to Arabia the Happy) containing much valuable information on coffee in Arabia and its introduction into France.

1715--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Haiti and Santo Domingo.

1715-17--Coffee cultivation is introduced into the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) by a sea captain of St. Malo, who brings the plants from Mocha by direction of the French Company of the Indies.

1718--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Surinam by the Dutch.

1718--Abbé Massieu's Carmen Caffaeum, the first and most notable poem on coffee written in Latin, is composed, and is read before the Academy of Inscriptions.

1720--Caffè Florian is opened in Venice by Floriono Francesconi.

1721--The first coffee house is opened in Berlin, Germany.

1721--Meisner publishes a treatise on coffee, tea, and chocolate.

1722--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Cayenne, from Surinam.

1723--The first coffee plantation started in the Portuguese colony of Pará, Brazil, with plants brought from Cayenne (French Guiana) results in failure.

1723--Gabriel de Clieu, Norman captain of infantry, sails from France, accompanied by one of the seedlings of the Java tree presented to Louis XIV, and with it shares his drinking water on a protracted voyage to Martinique.

1730--The English bring the cultivation of coffee to Jamaica.

1732--The British Parliament seeks to encourage the cultivation of coffee in British possessions in America by reducing the inland duty.

1732--Bach's celebrated Coffee Cantata is published in Leipzig.

1737--The Merchants' coffee house is established in New York; by some called the true cradle of American liberty and the birthplace of the Union.

1740--Coffee culture is introduced into the Philippines from Java by Spanish missionaries.

1748--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Cuba by Don José Antonio Gelabert.

1750--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Celebes from Java.

1750--The straight-line coffee pot in England begins to give way to the reactionary movement in art favoring bulbous bodies and serpentine spouts; the sides are nearly parallel, while the dome of the lid is flattened to a slight elevation above the rim.

1752--Intensive coffee cultivation is resumed in the Portuguese colonies in Pará and Amazonas, Brazil.

1754--A white-silver coffee roaster, eight inches high by four inches in diameter, is mentioned as being among the deliveries made to the army of Louis XV at Versailles.

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--João 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, entitled Il Caffè (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, Minãs, and São 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 classes.

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 Massachusetts 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 advertisement 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 substitute 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 Denobe, 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, Mass.

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, Mass.

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 glass 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 association, 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.

1818--The Havre coffee market for spot coffee and to arrive is established.

1819--Morize, a Paris tinsmith, invents a double drip reversible coffee pot.

1819--Laurens is granted a French patent on the original pumping-percolator device in which the boiling water was raised by steam pressure and sprayed over the ground coffee.

1820--Peregrine Williamson, Baltimore, is granted the first United States patent for an improvement on a coffee roaster.

1820--Another early form of the French percolator is patented by Gaudet, a Paris tinsmith.

1822--Nathan Reed, Belfast, Me., is granted a United States patent on a coffee huller.

1824--Richard Evans is granted a patent in England for a commercial method of roasting coffee, comprising a cylinder sheet-iron roaster fitted with improved flanges for mixing, a hollow tube and trier for sampling the coffee while roasting, and a means for turning the roaster completely over to empty it.

1825--The pumping percolator, working by steam pressure and by partial vacuum, comes into vogue in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere.

1825--The first coffee-pot patent in the United States is issued to Lewis Martelley, New York.

1825--Coffee cultivation is introduced into Hawaii from Rio de Janeiro.

1827--The first patent for a really practicable French coffee percolator is granted to Jacques Augustin Gandais, a manufacturer of plated jewelry in Paris.

1828--Charles Parker, Meriden, Conn., begins work on the original Charles Parker coffee mill.

1829--The first French patent on a coffee mill is granted Colaux et Cie, Molsheim, France.

1829--Établissements Lauzaune begin the manufacture of hand-turned cylinder coffee roasting machines in Paris.

1830--The import duty on coffee in the United States is reduced to two cents a pound.

1831--David Selden is granted a patent in England for a coffee-grinding mill having cones of cast-iron.

1831--John Whitmee & Co., England, begin the manufacture of coffee-plantation machinery.