Coffeemaker

An American physicist and inventor living in Paris, Benjamin Thompson, who was known as Count Rumford perfected the filter method of brewing coffee by devising a drip coffee pot in 1809. His coffeemaker had gold-plated mesh filters of different sizes for assorted cups, and a boiling water jacket which kept the coffee hot.

A French metalsmith named Laurens invented the first percolator back in 1818.

A Frenchman Louis Bernard Rabaut invented in 1822 an expresso coffee machine. It worked by forcing the hot water through the coffee grounds using steam, instead of merely letting it drip through.

Angelo Moriondo, an Italian inventor from Turin, Italy patented an early version of an espresso machine. On June 6, 1884. Moriondo received a patent for his "new steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage." His machine used steam and pressure to brew coffee quickly, and it featured a boiler and a series of valves and filters. Moriondo's device allowed him to make multiple cups at once for impatient customers at the Grand Hotel Ligure in Turin, which he owned.

James Mason of Franklin, Massachusetts registered the first American patent for a coffee percolator on December 26, 1865, His device still used a downflow method without rising steam and water.

Before the invention of the coffee percolator, European and Americans generally roasted their coffee at home using in particular popcorn poppers and stove-top frying pans.

Percolator By Andreaze - Wikipedia Commons

A German homemaker, Melitta Bentz, invented the coffee filter in 1907 after she lined a tin container with a circular piece of absorbent paper and placed the coffee in the container. She then put her creation over a coffee pot and poured hot water into it and the blotter paper automatically filtered the coffee grinds. Mrs Bentz had experimented with a number of different materials, until she found that her son's blotter paper used for school worked best.

The automatic coffeepot was invented in 1952 by Russell Hobbs (it was their first product). By using a bimetallic strip, which automatically cut out when the coffee was perked, a control could be added which regulates the strength of the coffee according to taste.

The first webcam was deployed at a computer lab at Cambridge University in 1993 – its sole purpose to monitor a coffee pot to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee room by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live picture of the state of the coffee pot.

The world's largest coffee pot is located in Davidson, Saskatchewan. It measures 24 feet tall, is made of sheet metal and can hold 150,000 eight ounce cups of coffee. 

James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther the barista on Friends was originally meant to only appear as an extra; he remained on the show as he was the only actor there who knew how to operate an espresso machine.