By Porter Lang
Start with the problem, because the gear only makes sense once you see it. Before 1908, the German patent office says, coffee was usually made by pouring fine powder into hot water and waiting for it to settle, or by sieving the mixture. Neither worked well.
What failed
The office, the DPMA, spells it out. The holes in a sieve were either too small, so they clogged, or too large, so the grounds floated back into the cup. The coffee was often only lukewarm after all that, and the grounds left an unpleasant aftertaste. So the fix had to hold back the grounds and let the water through. Our reading: speed mattered too, since lukewarm coffee was one of the complaints.
What she built
The woman who solved it was Melitta Bentz, a Dresden housewife, according to the DPMA, born there on 31 January 1873. She experimented in her kitchen with a perforated brass cup. In search of something to line it, she settled on blotting paper from her son’s exercise book. Europeana, the European cultural-heritage platform, describes the same materials, with the paper laid over holes pierced in the bottom of a brass pot. The company’s own history page says she punched holes in a brass cup and lined it with her son’s blotting paper.
Three sources, three slightly different containers: a brass cup, a brass pot, a brass cup. Our reading: they are describing the same object loosely. The pages do not say.
What the paperwork calls it
Here is the detail a buyer might care about. The patent office does not call it a patent. It calls it a utility model, registered on 20 June 1908 at the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin. Another page from the same office adds that it was entered in the Patent Gazette on 8 July 1908, on page 1145. Europeana says protection was granted on 20 June and published in July. Wikipedia’s summary says she was granted a patent. None of these pages explains how a utility model differs from a patent, so we do not.
The title of the registration appears in two translations from the same office. One reads “Coffee filter with a domed underside, recessed bottom and inclined flow holes.” The other reads “Coffee filter with a base that is curved and recessed on the underside and with inclined flow holes.” Either way, the title names the parts: a cup, a curved and recessed base, and holes set at an angle.
Dates in order
- 20 June 1908: the registration, according to the DPMA, the company and Europeana.
- 8 July 1908: entry in the Patent Gazette, according to the DPMA.
- 15 December 1908: the company is entered in the commercial register, according to the DPMA, with a starting capital of 72 Reichspfennig.
- 1909: the Leipzig Trade Fair, with more than 1,200 units sold, according to the DPMA.
- 1910 or 1911: medals at a hygiene exhibition in Dresden (the DPMA says 1910, the reference entry 1911).
- 1929: the move to Minden, according to the company and the DPMA.
How a kitchen business started
The firm began in a room of the family’s flat, the DPMA says. The couple had 100 cartons of filter paper and 50 filters made, then went round the shops to show the idea. A second DPMA page says the first 50 filter bodies were made in Westphalia and the paper came from Saxony. The Leipzig fair followed in 1909.
The DPMA also registers the name. The word mark Melitta was registered in 1911 for coffee filters and in 1913 for filter paper and related goods, according to the second DPMA page.
The red and green pack
A reference entry says a red-and-green pack was introduced to tell Melitta filters from imitators. The date is where the sources part.
- Company history page: 1922.
- Europeana: 1925.
- The second DPMA page and the reference entry: 1925, and the DPMA adds that the colours were protected as a trade mark.
Our reading: 1925 is the date three of four pages share, but the company should know its own pack, and the pages do not explain the gap.
The cone
The shape most people now know came later. The DPMA says that in 1936 a porcelain filter received an oval, tapered base, with a matching filter bag registered separately. The reference entry says the conical filter and its patent date to 1937. One year apart again, and again the pages do not reconcile them.
Where it is made
The company moved from Dresden to Minden in 1929, according to the company page and the DPMA. The reference entry adds that the new site was an old chocolate factory. The DPMA says the firm now produces around 50 million coffee filters a day, a figure it attributes to the company itself. Melitta Bentz died on 29 June 1950 in Holzhausen near Minden, the DPMA says.
What kind of sources these are
The German patent and trade mark office, Europeana, the company’s own history pages and a reference encyclopaedia entry. The company pages promote the brand. We left out the company’s later corporate history.
Questions a buyer would ask
Is the original Melitta filter a patent? The DPMA calls it a utility model, registered in 1908. Other pages say patent.
Was it always cone-shaped? No. The 1908 design was a perforated cup lined with paper. The tapered and conical shapes come in the 1930s, with the year given as 1936 or 1937.
Is the red and green pack old? The pack dates from the 1920s on every page we read, but the year is 1922 or 1925.
What we left out
Prices, later corporate history, ownership changes and the living family.
Quick answers
Who invented the paper coffee filter? According to the German patent office (DPMA), Melitta Bentz, a Dresden housewife, registered a utility model for her coffee filter on 20 June 1908, using blotting paper from her son’s exercise book.
What did Melitta Bentz first use as a filter? The DPMA says she experimented with a perforated brass cup and ended with blotting paper from her son’s exercise book. Europeana and the company’s own page give the same materials.
When did Melitta’s red and green pack appear? Europeana and the DPMA give 1925; the company’s own history page gives 1922. The sources do not explain the difference.
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