The History and Technological Development of Coffee Vending Machines

A vending machine is a machine that provides snacks, beverages, newspapers, magazines, lottery tickets, gold, and other products to consumers without a cashier. Items sold via these machines vary by country and region.

The first recorded reference to a vending machine is found in the work of Hero of Alexandria, a first-century engineer and mathematician. His machine accepted a coin and then dispensed a fixed amount of holy water. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.

Despite this early precedent, vending machines had to wait for the Industrial Age before they came to prominence. The first modern coin-operated vending machines were introduced in London, England in the early 1880s, dispensing post cards. The first vending machine in the U.S. was built in 1888 by the Thomas Adams Gum Company, selling gum on train platforms. The idea of adding simple games to these machines as a further incentive to buy came in 1897 when the Pulver Manufacturing Company added small figures, which would move around whenever somebody bought some gum from their machines. This simple idea spawned a whole new type of mechanical device known as the "trade stimulators". The birth of slot machines and pinball is ultimately rooted in these early devices.

The coffee vending machine technology has certainly encountered significant advancements in the past few years. As office businesses continue to grow from time to time, a lot of companies are offering their employees the comfort of using coffee vending machines in their premises. In line with these, many vending machine companies are exploring ways for the technology to be more efficient.

In the past years, vending machines were often considered as flawed due to weak kinds of drinks and lack of choices. However, with the technological advancements, vending machines now utilise tools to ensure that cups are loaded with the right quantity of coffee. Coffee dispensers nowadays also come in a wider variety of sizes and are in fact more cost-effective. In addition, modern units are available in different designs and features, with added tools for people to experience more comfort and convenience with every purchase.

Technological developments in coffee vending machines have also directed a broader selection of drinks available. These drinks range from fair-trade coffee, green teas, and hot chocolates. It is also usual for some machines to offer a variety of cold drinks such as filtered water and fruit juices. To cope with the improvements in the society, there are also hybrid types that are available in the market. This innovation offers the best quality caffeine drinks as well as a richer selection of teas and hot chocolates. Accordingly, since these advanced dispensers are more complicated in terms of function and mechanical details, they require more cleaning and maintenance than the ones in the past. [source : Coffee Vending Machines]

Espresso Coffee Machines

An espresso coffee machine is used to produce the traditional Italian coffee beverage called espresso.

Since their invention in 1901, multiple machine designs have been created to produce espresso. Several machines share some common elements.

Varying the fineness of the grind, the amount of pressure used to tamp the grinds, or the pressure itself can be used to vary the taste of the espresso. Some baristas pull espresso shots directly into a pre-heated demitasse cup or shot glass, to maintain a higher temperature of the espresso.

An espresso machine may also have a steam wand which is used to steam and froth liquids, to include milk, for beverages such as the cappuccino and latte.

A steam-driven unit operates by forcing water through the coffee by using steam or steam pressure. The first espresso machines were steam types, produced when a common boiler was piped to four group heads so that multiple types of coffee could be made at the same time. The design is still used today in low-cost consumer machines, as it does not need to contain moving parts. Many low-cost steam-driven units are sold in combination with a drip-coffee machine.

The piston, or lever, driven machine was developed in Italy in 1945 by Achille Gaggia, founder of espresso machine manufacturer Gaggia. The design generically uses a lever, pumped by the operator, to pressurize hot water and send it through the coffee grinds. The act of producing a shot of espresso is colloquially termed pulling a shot, because these lever-style espresso machines required pulling a long handle to produce a shot.

There are two types of lever machines; manual piston and spring piston design. With the manual piston, the operator directly pushes the water through the grounds. In the spring piston design, the operator works to tension a spring, which then delivers the pressure for the espresso (usually 8 to 10 bar).

A refinement of the piston machine is the pump-driven machine, which was introduced in the Faema E61 in 1961, and has become the most popular design in commercial espresso bars. Instead of using manual force, a motor-driven pump provides the force necessary for espresso brewing. Commercial or some high-end home machines are often attached directly to the plumbing of the site; lower-end home machines have built-in water reservoirs.

In recent years air-pump driven espresso machines have emerged. These machines use compressed air to force the hot water through the coffee grounds. The hot water is typically added from a kettle or a thermo flask. The compressed air comes from either a hand-pump, N20 or CO2 cartridges or an electric compressor. One of the advantages of the air-pump driven machines is that they are much smaller and lighter than electric machines. They are often handheld and portable. The first air-pump driven machine was Handpresso Wild, which was invented by Nielsen Innovation SARL, a French innovation house, and introduced in 2007. [source : Espresso Machine]

Electric Drip Coffeemakers

An electric drip coffee maker can also be referred to as a dripolator. It normally works by admitting water from a cold water reservoir into a flexible hose in the base of the reservoir leading directly to a thin metal tube or heating chamber (usually, of aluminum), where a heating element surrounding the metal tube heats the water. The heated water moves through the machine using the thermosiphon principle. Thermally-induced pressure and siphoning effect move the heated water through an insulated rubber or vinyl riser hose, into a spray head, and onto the ground coffee, which is contained in a brew basket mounted below the spray head. The coffee passes through a filter and drips down into the carafe. A one-way aromalock valve in the tubing prevents water from siphoning back into the reservoir. A thermostat attached to the heating element turns off the heating element as needed to prevent overheating the water in the metal tube (overheating would produce only steam in the supply hose), then turns back on when the water cools below a certain threshold. For a standard 10-12 cup drip coffeemaker, using a more powerful thermostatically-controlled heating element (in terms of wattage produced), can heat increased amounts of water more quickly using larger heating chambers, generally producing higher average water temperatures at the spray head over the entire brewing cycle. This process can be further improved by changing the aluminum construction of most heating chambers to a metal with superior heat transfer qualities, such as copper.

Throughout the latter part of the 20th century, a number of inventors patented various coffeemaker designs using an automated form of the drip brew method. Subsequent designs have featured changes in heating elements, spray head, and brew-basket design, as well as the addition of timers and clocks for automatic-start, water filtration, filter and carafe design, and even built-in coffee grinding mechanisms. [source : Electric Drip Coffeemakers]

Coffee Percolators

Coffee Percolators began to be developed from the mid-nineteenth century. In the United States, James Nason of Massachusetts patented an early percolator design in 1865. An Illinois farmer named Hanson Goodrich is generally credited with patenting the modern percolator. Goodrich's patent was granted on August 16, 1889, and his patent description varies little from the stovetop percolators sold today. With the percolator design, water is heated in a boiling pot with a removable lid, until the heated water is forced through a metal tube into a brew basket containing coffee. The extracted liquid drains from the brew basket, where it drips back into the pot. This process is continually repeated during the brewing cycle until the liquid passing repeatedly through the grounds is sufficiently steeped. A clear sight chamber in the form of a transparent knob on the lid of the percolator enables the user to judge when the coffee has reached the proper color and strength.

Domestic electrification simplified the operation of percolators by providing for a self-contained, electrically-powered heating element that removed the need to use a stovetop burner. A critical element in the success of the electric coffee maker was the creation of safe and secure fuses and heating elements. In an article in House Furnishing Review, May 1915, Lewis Stephenson of Landers, Frary and Clark described a modular safety plug being used in his company’s Universal appliances, and the advent of numerous patents and innovations in temperature control and circuit breakers provided for the success of many new percolator and vacuum models. While early percolators had utilized all-glass construction (prized for maintaining purity of flavor), most percolators made from the 1930s were constructed of metal, especially aluminum and nickel-plated copper.

The method for making coffee in a percolator had changed very little since its introduction in the early part of the 20th century. However, in 1970 General Food Corporation introduced Max Pax, the first commercially available "ground coffee filter rings”. The Max Pax filters were named so as to compliment General Foods' Maxwell House coffee brand. The Max Pax coffee filter rings were designed for use in percolators, and each ring contained a pre-measured amount of coffee grounds that were sealed in a self-contained paper filter. The sealed rings resembled the shape of a doughnut, and the small hole in the middle of the ring enabled the coffee filter ring to be placed in the metal percolator basket around the protruding convection (percolator) tube.

Prior to the introduction of pre-measured self-contained ground coffee filter rings; fresh coffee grounds were measured out in scoopfuls and placed into the metal percolator basket. This process enabled small amounts of coffee grounds to leak into the fresh coffee. Additionally, the process left wet grounds in the percolator basket, which were very tedious to clean. The benefit of the Max Pax coffee filter rings was two-fold: First, because the amount of coffee contained in the rings was pre-measured, it negated the need to measure each scoop and then place it in the metal percolator basket. Second, the filter paper was strong enough to hold all the coffee grounds within the sealed paper. After use, the coffee filter ring could be easily removed from the basket and discarded. This saved the consumer from the tedious task of cleaning out the remaining wet coffee grounds from the percolator basket.

With the introduction of the electric drip coffee maker for the home in the early 1970's, the popularity of percolators plummeted, and so did the market for the self-contained ground coffee filters. In 1976, General Foods discontinued the manufacture of Max Pax, and by the end of the decade, even generic ground coffee filter rings were no longer available on U.S. supermarket shelves. [source : Coffee Percolator]