Scott wrote:
> In article m>,
> Ross Reid > wrote:
>
>
>>Looks like sort of an upside down, steam driven, French press coffee
>>maker that could easily have been invented by Rube Goldberg ;-).
>>If the little black plastic knob comes out of the lid, perhaps it must
>>be removed whilst brewing so the steam pressure doesn't blow glass the
>>lid off?
>>That's my guess, who's next?
>
>
>
> Oh, sure, the *off-topic* post I mistakenly make gets replies.
>
> It's what I said: a "Vienna Incomparable." The initial design was made
> by Samuel Parker, a brazier on Argyle Street, London, first patented in
> 1833. Some time later:
> "the design crossed the English Channel to the Continent... to Germany
> and Austria, where it was adopted and adapted. By the last half of the
> nineteenth century it had a hooped frame on which it hung like a bird
> cage, and it had evolved into the 'Vienna Incomparable' and even crossed
> the Atlantic to the United States where it was mentioned and recommended
> in several manuals of household economy and ladies' magazines. It
> appeared for many years in the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores in
> London, imported from manufacturers in Germany in different sizes and
> was fitted sometimes with a pouring lip and sometimes with a serving
> tap. It survived well into the 1900s, Parker long forgotten, and known,
> beyond all hope of correction, as a Vienna coffeemaker."
>
> -- Edward and Joan Bramah, "Coffee Makers: 300 years of art and design"
>
> In action, it seems to work in like the stovetop moka makers do
> <http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.brewers.mokapot.shtml#mokapot>
> water is forced by pressure up through a central tube and through
> grounds held inside a perforated basket. This is *not* like what is
> currently of as a percolator: the coffee does not recirculate back down
> into the brewing water.
>
Lived next door to a Canajun couple whilst in the Middle East, you're
describing the same machine, only more modern, that they made their
coffee with. Trying to think back nearly 25 years I distinctly remember
that it made excellent coffee, much better than a percolater of a drip
machine.

George