a method of aging green coffee to give it the characteristics
of green coffee stored in a confined space for a long period. The
operation consisted in placing layers of green coffee between dry and
wet empty coffee bags, and permitting the beans to absorb eight to ten
percent of the moisture in a period extending from six to sixteen hours.
This was one of the earliest efforts to mature and age green coffee in
the United States.

In 1894, the business of the Pneumatic Scale Corporation, Norfolk Downs,
Mass., had its start in Quincy, Mass. where the first pneumatic weighing
machine was installed by the Purity Dried Fruits Cleansing Company. In
1895, the Electric Scale Company was organized to build the machines,
the subsequent development of this line of packaging machinery for
coffee being directed by the Pneumatic Scale Corporation, Ltd., which
succeeded it.

In 1895, Adolph Kraut introduced the German-made grease-proof lined
paper bags for coffee to the American coffee trade. That same year,
Thomas M. Royal, of Philadelphia, began the manufacture in the United
States of a fancy duplex-lined paper bag for coffee.

In 1896, natural gas was first used in the United States as a fuel for
roasting coffee.

In 1897, Joseph Lambert, Vermont, first introduced to the coffee trade a
self-contained coffee roasting outfit without the brick setting required
until then.

In 1897, the Enterprise Manufacturing Company of Pennsylvania was the
first regularly to employ an electric motor to drive a coffee mill.

The overproduction of coffee began to be so serious a question by 1898,
that J.D. Olavarria, a distinguished Venzuelan, proposed a plan for the
restriction of coffee cultivation and the regulation of coffee exports
from countries suffering from overproduction. In this same year, the
bears forced Rio 7's down to four and one-half cents on the New York
Coffee Exchange.

In 1898, Edward Norton, of New York, was granted a United States patent
on a vacuum process for canning foods, subsequently applied to coffee.
Others followed. Hills Brothers, of San Francisco, were the first to
pack coffee in a vacuum, under the Norton patents, in 1900. M.J.
Brandenstein & Company, of San Francisco, began to pack coffee in vacuum
cans in 1914. Vacuum sealing machines to pack coffee under the Norton
patents are now made by the Perfect Vacuum Canning Company of New York.

About 1899, Dr. Sartori Kato of Tokio, who had invented a soluble tea i