1872. Mr. Burns had also given
the subject of cooling coffees considerable study, and his cooler was
the result. He argued that it was necessary to cool quickly. Before his
day, various methods had been employed, such as placing the coffee in
revolving drums covered with wire cloth. Sometimes a draft of cold air
was applied to the cooling drums, and the dirt and chaff blown through
the wire cloth. It was also customary in wholesale establishments to
blow cold air up through a perforated bottom, and this had been found
effective when properly applied. The Burns idea was to cool by means of
suction, causing a downward draft through the coffee and wire-cloth
bottomed box, which was found to be more uniform and efficient for
cooling purposes, as well as in controlling smoke, heat, and dust, which
by this means could be blown out of the roasting room by any convenient
outlet.

On the subject of grinding, likewise, Mr. Burns had reached some
definite conclusions. The French and English lap and wall mills, the
English steel mills, and the Swift mills were all used in the United
States. Troemner's, the Enterprise, and others--to be mentioned later in
chronological order--were extending their use in a retail way; but Jabez
Burns confined his attention to a practicable mill for wholesale
grinding establishments.

For manufacturing purposes, burstone mills were for many years
exclusively employed, especially one first known as the Prentiss & Page,
and later as the Page mill. There was a time when all the coffee
establishments in New York sent their coffee to Prentiss & Page to be
ground. Some of the places roasted by hand, others by horse power; and
if by steam, it was limited, and they did not have enough to spare for
grinding.

With the march of improvement, burstone mills went into the discard. The
difficulty lay in finding men experienced in stone dressing to run them;
and the demand grew for a better style of grinding than could be done in
a mill out of face and balance. This demand was met in an altogether
different style of machine, which for twenty-five years was well known
as the Barbor mill. It was for improvements on this mill that Jabez
Burns in 1867, 1872, and 1874 obtained his granulator patents.

The mill comprised cutters in the form of an iron roller running in near
contact with a concave, also of iron, and a revolving cylinder provided
with sieves, or screens, that received the ground material, rolled it
ov