Instant coffee patentIn 1903, the first U.S. patent for instant coffee was issued to Satori Kato of Chicago, Illinois. It was entitled "Coffee Concentrate and Process of Making Same" (No. 735,777). The application was filed 17 Apr 1901, in which year his Kato Coffee Company introduced the product at the Pam-American Exposition in Buffalo. Two years earlier, four men had formed the company when an American coffee importer and a roaster contacted Sartori Kato (the Japanese inventor of a soluble tea), who adapted his process of dehydration to coffee, with the assistance of an American chemist.[Image: Souvenir from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.] |