The Birth of the Espresso Coffee Machine

A Bezzera coffee machine is named after the Italian Luigi Bezzera who patented his espresso machine in 1902. In the 19th century, drinking coffee was extremely popular in Europe, but the actual process of brewing a cup was time-consuming and laborious, taking five minutes for a cup of coffee to brew, which could make life difficult for workers on their “coffee break”.

In order to speed up the process, in 1884 Angelo Moriondo patented a “new steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage” which was the prototype of the espresso machine. Espresso is Italian for “fast”. However, Moriondo’s machine  could only produce coffee in bulk, and it was left to inventor and businessman Bezzera to produce the first machine that would force steam and hot water through ground up coffee into an individual cup thus reducing the brewing time from several minutes to 30 seconds or so.

The Bezzera coffee machine had several improvements over Moriondo’s machine which was created for the Turin Grand Exposition as a bulk brewer. In fact, not much is known about Moriondo after that and there are no machines still in existence. It was Bezzera who introduced the multiple brew heads, portafilter, and many other innovations that are still in use today.

However, Bezzera only built a few prototypes because he had neither the money to expand the business, nor any idea about how to market the machine, and in 1903 he sold his patents to Desiderio Pavoni who set about making further improvements, notably the pressure release valve which prevented the barista from being splashed with hot coffee. Bezzera and Pavoni worked together and introduced the Bezzera coffee machine to the world at the 1906 Milan Fair where they made cafee espresso.

Among the growing number of competitors to Pavoni was Pier Teresio Arduino who had a much larger workshop than Pavoni, and it was he who exported the machines to the rest of Europe. However, the machines that we have today were invented by Milanese café owner Achille Gaggia who managed to increase the pressure from only 1.5 bars to 8 – 10 bars and in so doing produced the crema that now floats on the surface.