As you’re enjoying your coffee, possibly an espresso-based drink, give a thought to Angelo Moriondo, who was born 173 years ago today in Turin. Why, you ask? Simple. Moriondo invented the espresso machine. Or, well, at least pretty much the basic kind of espresso machine used today.
Moriondo was born into a family of entrepreneurs — his grandfather founded a company that made liqueurs, his father founded a chocolate company, and Moriondo himself went into the hotel business when he bought the Grand Hotel Liguire and the American Bar in Turin.
His motivation for his invention was simply that he needed to serve coffee in his hotel and bar, and at the time (the 1870s and 80s) brewing coffee was a messy, slow process. Moriondo came up with a way to use steam and boiling water in an enclosed vessel, and patented it in 1884. He designed his machine, but didn’t build it (this may be the earliest precursor to the famous Star Trek quote “I’m a doctor, not an engineer!”). For that he hired a local mechanic. The machine was designed to produce a whole urn full of coffee, not just one cup at a time. After all, Moriondo had a hotel full of guests to serve.
He took his invention to the Expo of Turin in 1884 and won a bronze medal. That suggests there were two even better inventions displayed there, but whatever they might have been doesn’t seem to have been noted by anybody. Probably too busy ordering another espresso.
Moriondo kept improving his machine over the next few years and patenting each new feature. But he never really commercialized it. Instead, he installed his hand-built machines in his hotel and bar — he considered those his main businesses. The fact that they served excellent coffee right away was a feature, not a business by itself. At least that’s what Moriondo thought. He wouldn’t let anyone else copy or even see his espresso machines; they were a trade secret.
It’s not clear, by the way, whether Moriondo called his version of coffee “espresso.” The term refers to pressing the water (or steam) through the coffee, and was used here and there around Italy for some time, but didn’t get used in English until the 20th Century.
When the patents expired, of course, anybody was free to use them to build a similar machine, but the system was slow to catch on. Another patent was filed in 1901, and finally in 1945 Achille Gaggia came up with the lever-action espresso machine that produces just one or two cups at a time.
Unfortunately Moriondo’s espresso machines — and even the establishments where they were used — were lost; his American Bar was in the Galleria Nazionale in Turin, and it was demolished in 1930. But Moriondo is still remembered for his “New steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage.” Except in Star Trek. For some reason, the food replicators on the USS Enterprise were never asked to deliver an espresso.
From the American Bar in Turin
