Coffee cultivation is introduced into Hawaii from Rio de Janeiro. Don Francisco de Paula Marin with the approval of King Kamehameha planted the first coffee seeds in Hawaii in 1817. The plantings were a failure but in 1825, the first successful coffee orchard was established. Kona coffee soon to come! Aloha!

Coffee is really starting to perk along... Laurens, a Parisian metal- smith invents the first coffee percolator.

Just as George Stephenson was building the first steam-powered locomotive named locomotion, that would change the way we travel, kick off the industrial age and change the world forever, something even better and more important was starting to hisssssss... The world's first espresso machine steams ahead in France. Louis Bernard Rabaut is credited with developing a brewing machine that used steam to force hot water through the coffee grounds, creating the first early version of what we know as an Espresso!

After deciding against heading to the gold-filled streams in the Sierras and participating in California's gold rush, James Folger stayed in wild San Francisco, where its Barbary Coast was filled with saloons and scantily-clad women in bordellos, who kept men up all night long. Easy choice for James, don't you think, hmm, wading in cold-streams looking for nuggets or mining hot women and their golden nuggets? He soon makes his own golden fortune by founding the J.A. Folger Coffee Company. He's a pioneer in west coast coffee and helps create the California caffeine rush to keep those prospectors digging and those other hung-over newcomers building the great state that it was soon to become.

James H. Nason patents the first coffee percolator in the United States. Whose idea was it anyways? Something smells bitter here. Well, where there is a will, there is an american way.

John Arbuckle with the aid of a draftsman and machinist invented a machine that filled, weighed, sealed and labeled coffee in paper packages. From his factory in New York, the "Arbuckle Ariosa" became the first mass produced coffee sold all over the country. Eventually Arbuckle became the largest importer of coffee in the world and soon became the largest ship owner in America because every merchant ship engaged in the South American coffee trade was his. Sadly, the days of small millers and coffee roasters are soon coming to an end in this brief history of coffee.

Joel Cheek names his new coffee blend "Maxwell House" after the ritzy hotel that serves it in Nashville, Tennessee. Seven presidents stayed at the Maxwell House Hotel, including Theodore Roosevelt, whose 1907 comment that this delightful coffee was "Good to the Last Drop" launched the advertising slogan that was used to promote the nation's first- blended coffee. Click here to view the vintage advertisement.