fuel for
roasting, being introduced under coal roasting cylinders in
Pennsylvania and Indiana by improvised gas-burners.

1896-1897--Beeston Tupholme is granted United States patents on his
direct-flame gas coffee roaster.

1897--Joseph Lambert of Vermont begins the manufacture and sale in
Battle Creek, Mich., of the Lambert self-contained coffee roaster
without the brick setting then required for coffee roasting
machines.

1897--A special gas burner (made the basis of application for
patent) is first attached to a regular Burns roaster.

1897--The Enterprise Manufacturing Co., Pennsylvania, is the first
regularly to employ electric motors for driving commercial coffee
mills by means of belt-and-pulley attachments.

1897--Carl H. Duehring, Hoboken, N.J., assignor to D.B. Fraser, New
York, is granted a United States patent on a coffee roaster.

1898--The Hobart Manufacturing Co., Troy, Ohio, puts on the market
one of the first coffee grinders connected with an electric motor
and driven by a belt-and-pulley attachment.

1898--Millard F. Hamsley, Brooklyn, is granted a United States
patent on an improved direct-flame gas coffee roaster.

1898--Edwin Norton of New York is granted a United States patent on
a vacuum process of canning foods, later applied to coffee. Others
follow.

1898--J.D. Olavarria, a distinguished Venezuelan, first advocates a
plan for restriction of coffee production, and for regulation of
coffee exports from countries suffering from overproduction.

1898--A bear campaign forces Rio 7's down to four and a half cents
on the New York Coffee Exchange.

1899--The bubonic-plague boom temporarily halts the downward trend
of coffee prices.

1899--The Canister Co., Phillipsburg, N.J., begins the manufacture
of square and oblong fiber-bodied tin-end cans for coffee.

1899--Soluble coffee is invented in Chicago by Dr. Sartori Kato, a
chemist of Tokio.

1899--David B. Fraser, New York, is granted two patents in the
United States, one for a coffee roaster and one for a coffee
cooler.

1899--Ellis M. Potter, New York, is granted a United States patent
on a direct-flame gas coffee roasting machine embodying certain
improvements on the Tupholme machine, whereby the gas flame is
spread over a large