Subscribe RSS FeedIn 1963, the Braun company had come out with one of the world’s first commercially available dripolator machines, the Braun Coffee Maker. Designed for commercial use, it changed the way people looked at making a cup of coffee.
Before the Braun Coffee Maker, people used a stove top percolator machine to brew their coffee. From home to commercial use, perking coffee was the only way to get a cup of joe. Later versions of percolator machines were electric, and could be plugged directly into a socket.
The difference between percolators and dripolators is what changed the world of coffee as Americans knew it. Instead of having to perk coffee, people were able to fill up a separate water reservoir, put coffee grounds into a filter and put the filter into a basket. From there, one simply had to plug in the machine and turn it on.
The water would then heat up in the water reservoir and drip onto the freshly ground coffee. As it made the journey through the grounds, the water would turn into coffee, much like one would brew a cup of tea. By the time the hot water made its way through the coffee grounds and dripped into the empty pot below, it was a perfect cup of coffee.
The filter kept the grounds from mixing in with the actual coffee, and a new way to complete a daily task was born. While the Braun Coffee Maker was the first one on the market for commercial use, it wasn’t the first one to hit the kitchen counter of the average American citizen.
What the Braun Coffee Maker did for commercial use, Mr. Coffee did for home use. In 1972, Mr. Coffee was on store shelves. Pitched by former baseball player Joe DiMaggio, the machine became wildly popular in the 1970s and 1980s.