A vintage 1903 espresso machine at a Village cafe (2012)

Interestingly it took until 1961 for the E61 group head to appear. This clever valve system with portafilter revolutionized consistency and took some of the fussiness (skill) out of shot-pulling process. The design is still going strong today, although there are definitely improved versions of it on super-high-end machines.

The first syrian flaffel shop in the USA is right next door. The other side is Cafe Wha, one of Jimmy Hendrix's spots when he was in NYC.

Anecdote: when my dad was a child, one of the main coffee machines in the entire village required the slow work of a donkey attached to crankshaft to grind the beans.<p>One day, someone decided to mechanize this process, and attached it to a motor. The whole village gathered to watch the stunt, and my dad says the machine literally exploded from the speed.<p>No one was injured but parts of the machine could be found far away from the centre for a long time.

Mailing your life savings to another country must have been nerve wrecking. He was risking dying in poverty after he couldn&#x27;t do his job anymore. People still do that now, but they don&#x27;t send you anything back.

It’s a good story, but can it really be the case that no-one imported an espresso machine into the US for _22 years_ (the first commercially produced one was in 1905, not ‘03) after they were commercialised?

Interesting how taking off his hat would make the guy sneeze. Is an action (or thought, such as being without a hat) linked to the &quot;sneeze&quot; center of the brain? How?

How are those old espresso machines heated?

There&#x27;s gonna be so much lead in that machine and the coffee that it makes...

Too bad the photo isn&#x27;t better, this antique deserves proper documentation.

In 1927, the first espresso machine was brought to America. The huge machine is still on display at the Caffe Reggio in NYC.