Achille Gaggia didn't invent espresso machines. But the changes he made to their development, including founding the company that now bears his name, transformed espresso machines and their product forever - and made it worth taking a look at the achievements of Italy's foremost espresso machine maker.

Credit for the first espresso machines, according to coffee fan site wholelattelove.com, goes to Luigi Bezzera. He developed a machine that pushed water and steam through ground coffee and into a cup and became known as the espresso machine. His patent was registered in Milan in 1901 but - due to Bezzera's financial inability to develop his machine further - sold to Desiderio Pavoni two years later.

Steam-based espresso machines

Pavoni improved Bezzera's designs and his "Ideale" model became "the standard for the first generation of espresso machines", according to wholelattelove.com. The Ideale still relied on steam to make espresso, however, and there was a major development still to come.

Milan barista Giovanni Achille Gaggia was dissatisfied with the flavour of coffee produced by his espresso machines. He and an inventor's widow called Rosetta Scorza he logged patents in Mussolini's Italy for screw pistons to be added to espresso machines to force the water through the grounds, not the steam, which would avoid scalding the coffee.

War halts espresso machines

The Second World War interrupted Gaggia's work, but in 1947 he registered a new patent for an up-and-down lever piston. A spring provided enough pressure to force the water through the coffee without steam entirely (which was henceforward reserved for frothing milk, as in a cappuccino). The Gaggia company today calls the 1947 patent "perhaps the single biggest development of all time in coffee brewing". Their claim that Gaggia's new machine "made a cup of coffee that was totally different to any other coffee" was certainly true.

Gaggia's new espresso machines delivered the coffee to the cup with a light, cream-like mousse on top - the "crema". As well as delivering an intense flavour and aroma, the crema gave espressos a new visual beauty - to the extent that people would walk into coffee bars just to see the coffee (with many declaring it to be a fraud).

1970s: bar-quality espresso machines for the home

Like those of Bezzera and Pavoni, Gaggia's espresso machines went on to sell all around the world - and by the 1970s people could buy bar-quality espresso machines for their own homes.

But for true coffee fans, it will always be the crema that is considered the true heart of the perfect espresso - and they will always thank Giovanni Achille Gaggia for it.

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