Internal combustion engine: Designed by the German Nikolaus August Otto

In 1680, Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens designed (but never built) an internal combustion engine that was to be fueled with gunpowder. Then in 1824, Samuel Brom from Britain adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas.

The name of Nikolaus August Otto will always be associated with the invention of the atmospheric gas engine and with the introduction of the four-stroke or Otto cycle for gas engines, which formed the subject of his German patent of Aug. 4, 1877.

This type of internal combustion engine is called a four-stroke engine because there are four movements, or strokes, of the piston before the entire engine firing sequence is repeated. Most modern automobiles are powered by “Otto cycle” engines, direct descendants of the first four-stroke compression internal combustion engine.

Born in Holshausen, Nassau Germany on June 10, 1832 and died on Jan. 26, 1891, at the age of fifty-eight years, at Cologne. He developed the four-stroke internal-combustion engine, which is widely used in transportation even today. Otto developed the four-stroke internal combustion engine when he was 34 years old.

Because of its reliability, its efficiency, and its relative quietness, Otto’s engine was an immediate success.
Internal combustion engine: Designed by the German Nikolaus August Otto

Invention of Melitta coffee maker

Melitta Coffee Filter and a popular drip system that goes with it including special pot, was invented by Melitta Bentz of Dresden Germany in 1908.

This is because she wanted better coffee for her family. She was looking for a way to brew the perfect cup of coffee with none of the bitterness cause by over brewing.

Melitta decided to invent a way to make a filtered coffee, pouring boiling water over ground coffee and having the liquid be filtered, removing any grinds.

Melitta did many experiments with different materials, until she found that her son’s blotter paper use for school worked best. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of her son blotting paper in the bottom of it, and put this creation over the pot, and having coffee filtered.

The Melitta Automatic drip Coffee Maker was patented by Melitta Bentz in Germany on June 20th, 1908. At the Leipzig trade fair of 1909, she sold over 12 of her “coffee makers.”
Invention of Melitta coffee maker

Invention of coffee maker by Melitta Bentz

A coffee maker called a percolator was invented in France in 1827. The percolator was designed to heat water and brew coffee in one operation, by pumping hot water through coffee grounds.

Filtered coffee also known as drip coffee is the newest method of coffee infusion and the preferred method of coffee aficionados. Filtered coffee was invented by a Dresden (Germany) housewife in 1908 named Melitta Bentz. At the time, people put ground coffee seeds into cloth bags and brewed them in hot water.

Bentz hankered after a tastier and more efficient way to brew her home-made coffee and had tired of the old choice between a Turkish coffee with grounds in the bottom of the cup, or with the grounds messily strained out through a dishcloth. Often, the grounds seeped into the coffee when the bags became worn, making the beverage undesirable to drink.

Bentz placed a sheet of blotting paper inside a brass pot that had holes in the bottom and poured hot water through the top. She discovered that the ground remained inside the paper, and did not seep into the beverage.

She patented it as the ‘Filter Top Device Lined with Filter Paper’. Bentz went into business with less than 1 Deutschmark and established a company Melitta to sell her wonderful new product.

The first year, Bentz sold 1250 coffee filters at a fair. By 1912, she had established a business a to manufacture coffee filters.

In the 1960s, the company began marketing a coffee maker in the United States with a wedge-shaped filter holder and filters that open like a pocket, so the water passes through only one layer of paper.
Invention of coffee maker by Melitta Bentz