nd G.W. Hope were granted two
United States patents on coffee or tea pots, also assigned to Manning,
Bowman & Co.

In 1904, Sigmund Sternau, J.P. Steppe, and L. Strassberger, assignors to
S. Sternau & Co., New York, were granted a United States patent on a
percolator. Six others were granted to Charles Nelson, and assigned to
S. Sternau & Co., in 1912 and 1913, for a percolator, the manufacture
and sale of which were discontinued in 1915.

In 1905, a celebrated case was decided in Kansas City involving
litigation between William E. Baker, of Baker & Co., Minneapolis, and
the F.A. Duncombe Manufacturing Co., of St. Joseph, Mo., over Mr.
Baker's patent rights in a machine to produce steel-cut coffee. The suit
was brought in 1903, and Mr. Baker contended that his patent gave him
the exclusive right to the "uniformity of granules by means of the
sharply dressed mechanism" and by the use of a fan for blowing away the
silver skins, produced by his machine; while the defendant said he
obtained the same result (steel-cut coffee) by grading the granules
through screens or sieves. The defense was that Mr. Baker's process was
not a discovery; because, grinding coffee was as old as the world's
knowledge, and winnowing the chaff was equally ancient. The lower court
dismissed the bill, because the "patents sued upon are devoid of
patentable invention"; and the United States Court of Appeals confirmed
the decision.

[Illustration: ENTERPRISE HAND STORE MILL]

In 1905, Frederick A. Cauchois, of New York, brought out his Private
Estate coffee maker, a clever combination of the French drip and filter
processes, employing a thin layer of Japanese paper as a filtering
agent. The same year, Finley Acker, of Philadelphia, was granted a
United States patent on a percolator employing two cylinders, perforated
on the sides, with a sheet of percolator paper placed between them to
act as a filtering medium.

In 1906, George Savage and J.W. Chapman, assignors to Manning, Bowman &
Co. of Meriden, Conn., were granted a United States patent on a coffee
percolator.

In 1906, Alonzo A. Warner, assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New
Britain, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a coffee
percolator.

In 1906, H.D. Kelly, Kansas City, was granted a United States patent on
the Kellum Automatic coffee urn, employing a coffee extractor in which
ground coffee is continually agitated before percolation by a vacuum
process. Sixteen patents fo