How coffee got quicker | Moments of Vision 2

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For the 64% of Americans that drink coffee daily, an expedient cup is practically essential. But preparing coffee hasn’t always been easy. In the second installment of our ‘Moments of Vision’ series, Jessica Oreck shares the ingenuity of one coffee mill worker who made it considerably quicker for you to get your fix of caffeine.

Lesson and animation by Jessica Oreck.

In a Moment of Vision...

It's 1849.

William H. Bovee leaves his job
at a coffee producer in New York City

to seek his fortune
in gold-fevered California.

But leaving behind the luxuries
of the city,

Bovee leaves behind a more expedient
cup of joe.

Out west, folks are still buying
their coffee beans green,

roasting the beans at home,

then grinding them with a hand crank,

all before actually brewing them.

Bovee builds California's
first coffee mill,

packaging and selling pre-roasted beans.

And in a moment of vision,
he takes the process one step farther

making his mill the world's first to grind
the already roasted beans

on a large scale,

then pack them conveniently
into small, consumer-friendly tins.

Only a few years later, however,
Bovee tires of the coffee business

and sells his shares of the company
to a young employee: James Folger.

Folger changes the name and grows
the company to a nationwide brand,

jumpstarting a race to find the quickest,
easiest way to that morning caffeine fix.

For the 64% of Americans that drink
coffee daily,

an expedient cup
is practically essential.