n the ground coffee is retained by cloth
or paper, generally supported by some portion of the brewing device, and
extraction effected by pouring water on the top of the mass, permitting
the liquid to percolate through, the filtering medium retaining the
grounds.

_Patents and Devices_

From the beginning, the French devoted more attention than any other
people to coffee brewing. The first French patent on a coffee maker was
granted in 1802 to Denobe, Henrion, and Rauch for "a
pharmacological-chemical coffee making device by infusion."

In 1802, Charles Wyatt obtained a patent in London on an apparatus for
distilling coffee.

The first French patent on an improved French drip pot for making coffee
"by filtration without boiling" was granted to Hadrot in 1806. Strictly
speaking, this was not a filtering device, as it was fitted with a tin
composition strainer, or grid. It was very like Count Rumford's
percolator announced six years later, as will be seen by comparing the
two in chapter XXXIV.

In 1815, Sene invented in France his _Cafetiere Sene_, another device to
make coffee "without boiling."

About the year 1817, the coffee biggin appeared in England. It was
simply a squat earthenware pot with an upper, movable, strainer part
made of tin, after the French drip pot pattern. Later models employed a
cloth bag suspended from the rim of the pot. It was said to have been
invented by a Mr. Biggin; and Dr. Murray, of dictionary fame, seems to
have become convinced of this gentleman's existence, although others
have doubted it and thought the name was of Dutch origin, the article
having been first made for Holland. It has been suggested that, in all
probability, the name came from the Dutch word _beggelin_, to trickle,
or run down. One thing is certain, coffee biggins came originally from
France; so that if there was a Mr. Biggin, he merely introduced them
into England. The coffee biggin with which Americans are most familiar
is a pot containing a flannel bag or a cylindrical wire strainer to hold
the ground coffee through which the boiling water is poured. The Marion
Harland pot was an improved metal coffee biggin. The Triumph coffee
filter was a cloth-bag device which made any coffee pot a biggin.

In 1819, Morize, a Paris tinsmith, invented a double drip, reversible
coffee pot. The device had two movable "filters" and was placed bottom
up on the fire until the water boiled, when it was inverted to let the
coffee