The Great Glass Coffee Experiment

It may look like an elegant Victorian chemistry experiment, but Friday's mystery contraption is actually a coffee maker from the mid-1850s. And a lot of you were totally on the right track. However, many congratulations and cups of fine coffee to ceemee and Caroline who were absolutely right!

This type of coffee maker was known as a balance siphon, and was a form of vacuum coffee maker. All of which requires a little explaining. The vacuum coffee maker has two containers, usually one on top of the other, connected by a tube. The water is heated in the bottom. The expansion caused by heat forces the water up through the tube into the upper container, which has coffee grounds in it. When all the water is at the top, the heat is turned off, which creates a vacuum and the brewed coffee drips back down into the lower part of the coffee maker.

The balance siphon coffee maker has the two vessels side by side on a platform but works in the same way. The platform contains a counterweight attached to the heated vessel. The counterweight activates a mechanism (usually a snuffer) which turns the heating element off when the coffee and water have combined. The heater was, in the Victorian models, usually a spirit lamp. In this case, the white porcelain water boiler is on the right, with a glass spirit lamp under it. The glass coffee vessel is at the left, and has a copper top. The rod in the center is brass and has a spring-loaded bracket (which turns off the spirit lamp).

My favorite Victorian balance siphon coffee maker, however, is Jefferson Davis' locomotive coffee maker, which Jack Finney writes about in Forgotten News. French friends of the Confederacy gave it to Davis in the 1860s, and later it came into the possession of President Andrew Johnson, who (Finney writes) did actually use it in the White House. It had a music box inside which played "Dixie" as the coffee was being brewed.

Finney includes pictures of it, but I thought I had better not get in trouble scanning them right out of the book. The water heats in the steam engine and a whistle tells you when the water is hot. The charming little pink locomotive coffee maker above is very similar, though. It dates from about 1864 and was made in France like the Davis coffee maker. The image is from Earlytech, and I hope that they do not mind me sharing it with you here. There is an excellent article about this coffee maker at Earlytech, too.

Many thanks as always to you all for playing this week:

Daisy the Curly Cat
Fresh Hell
Caroline at The Quack Doctor
Susan Helene Gottfried at West of Mars
wngl at Zeitheist
Bethany at Beppycat and Co.
John at English Wilderness
Norkio at Past Periods Press
ceemee at cazzapoeia
Lisa at Alterity Antique and Vintage Button Jewelry
Pam Walter at Satisfied Sole
Hairball at Hairballs on the Carpet of Life
Jude at Mature Not Senile
filmtub at filmtub
Debbi at Debbi's Random Thoughts
Annemieke (no link)
Auntie E at At Home With Auntie E
Anonymous (no link)

Here at CoffeeGeek you can see a reproduction of a similar coffee maker from the 1840s - on sale for $600. And here are more at Espresso Vero.

Next Friday, I will do something different - not sure what, yet. I'll probably space out the Mystery Objects so that we don't get tired of doing the same thing every week, because that is no fun at all.