Alfonso Bialetti () (17 June 1888– 4 March 1970) was an Italian engineer who became famous for the invention of the
Moka Express coffeemaker
A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee gr ...
. Designed in 1933, the
coffee
Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world.
S ...
pot has been a style
icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...
since the 1950s. While many variations of the Moka have been developed, including the Bialetti cow-printed Mukka Express (which makes
cappuccino
A cappuccino (; ; Italian plural: ''cappuccini'') is an espresso-based coffee drink that originated in Austria and was later popularized in Italy and is prepared with steamed milk foam (microfoam).
Variations of the drink involve the use of cre ...
), the Moka Express is a time-honoured classic. Bialetti was also the founder of
Bialetti Industries, the now giant Italian kitchen-ware company.
The Bialetti Company
Bialetti first acquired his
metal-working
Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...
skills by working for a decade in the French
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
industry.
[Schnapp, Jeffrey T]
"The Romance of Caffeine and Aluminum"
''Critical Inquiry
''Critical Inquiry'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Department of English Language and Literature (University of Chicago). While the topics and historic ...
'', Vol. 28, No. 1, 2001. Retrieved on 2005-10-27. By 1919 he had established his own metal and machine workshop in Crusinallo (his native
Piedmont
it, Piemontese
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) to make aluminium products: this was the foundation of the Bialetti company.
["History: 1919 – The Origins of Bialetti"](_blank)
''Bialetti Industrie S.p.A.
Bialetti is an Italian brand founded by Alfonso Bialetti that makes coffee machines, cookware and small kitchen appliances. The brand is owned by Bialetti Industries.
History
Alfonso Bialetti first acquired his metal-working skills by working f ...
''. Retrieved on 2005-10-27 He transformed his workshop – Alfonso Bialetti & C. Fonderia in Conchiglia – into a studio for design and production.
The Moka Express
Design
![Bialetti moka express-made-in-italy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bialetti_moka_express-made-in-italy.jpg)
Bialetti completed his design for the aluminium Moka Express in 1933. It may also be referred to as a Moka, Moka pot, a Bialetti, a
percolator
A coffee percolator is a type of pot used for the brewing of coffee by continually cycling the boiling or nearly boiling brew through the Coffee preparation#Grinding, grounds using gravity until the required strength is reached.
Coffee percolat ...
or a stove-top
coffeemaker
A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee gr ...
, and in Italian as ''la Moka'', ''la macchinetta'' ("the little machine") or ''la caffettiera''. The blueprints for the Moka Express are on display in the London
Design Museum
The Design Museum in Kensington, London exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generat ...
. Bialetti was probably heavily influenced by contemporary designers such as Hoffmann, Puiforcat, Genazzi and Henin; to a certain extent he copied and built upon their coffee-pot designs.
The coffee pot's clean classic design with its symmetrical eight-faceted metallic body is easily recognisable—it followed the same design for over 70 years (unusual in a world of constantly changing products). Since its creation the Moka has become the world's most famous coffee pot and has been cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as well as in various essential design books. The Bialetti design has also provided an inspiration for modern designers; Julian Lwin A New York designer, paid homage to the Moka Express with his own "Dr. Octagon Espresso" set of table and chairs.
The use of aluminium to construct the body of the coffee pot was also a relatively new industrial concept as aluminium was not a traditional "domestic metal". Soon the material was to become more common in kitchens and the mid-1930s are considered to be the golden era in the production of aluminium products for the kitchen.
The coming together of
coffee
Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world.
S ...
and aluminum may have been inevitable,
however, it was the Bialetti design together with the use of the novel metal which made the coffee-pot something rather special.
Development and marketing
The Moka was eventually to transform the Bialetti company into a leading Italian coffee-machine designer and manufacturer. Between 1934 and 1940 the humble Moka was only marketed locally – sold by Alfonso at the weekly markets in Piedmont.
In these six years he only produced 70,000 units.
By 2001 a total of 220 million units had been produced
and to date the number has reached 330 million. During World War II the rising prices of coffee and aluminium stalled production of the Bialetti products. It was not until Renato, Alfonso's son, took over in 1946 that the Bialetti product line was narrowed down to a single product: the Moka Express.
A huge multi-faceted marketing campaign was initiated by Renato. It incorporated television, billboards which saturated the streets of Milan and even the creation of a giant statue of the Moka Express coffee pot.
Copy-cat designs were infiltrating the market by now and advertising turned out to be a key strategy in defining the success of the Moka and ensuring the popularity of the Bialetti brand. ''L'omino con i baffi'' – the Moka mascot – was based on a humorous cartoon doodle of Alfonso Bialetti's son Renato.
The initial sketches and logo were created in 1953 by Paul Campani.
By 1956 the Bialetti company had managed to construct a state-of-the-art factory in
Omegna
Omegna (, , ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about southwest of Verbania at the northernmost point of Lago d’Orta and traversed by the ...
.
Social impact
Espresso machines prior to the Moka Express were large, expensive, and technically complicated. Few people kept them at home, so coffee-drinking was largely a public affair. The Moka Express, which was comparatively small, cheap, and easy to use, made it feasible for many more people to brew espresso at home. Over the rest of the 20th century, it gradually displaced other home coffee makers invented in the late 19th century, such as the
Napoletana and the Milanese.
Mechanics of coffee percolation
Aromatic compounds
Aromatic compounds, also known as "mono- and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons", are organic compounds containing one or more aromatic rings. The parent member of aromatic compounds is benzene. The word "aromatic" originates from the past groupin ...
and other flavour compounds are extracted from coffee grains by the Moka using a process known as
percolation
Percolation (from Latin ''percolare'', "to filter" or "trickle through"), in physics, chemistry and materials science, refers to the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials.
It is described by Darcy's law.
Broader applicatio ...
. In order to percolate or brew the coffee the percolator is placed on a stove element and heated until pressure in the water compartment increases causing the water to rise through a funnel, through the coffee grains, through a filter and, finally, into the top compartment. According to the Bialetti corporate lore the mechanical design for the Moka was inspired by the primitive washing-machines: linens were boiled in tubes built around a central conduit that drew the boiling soapy water up through it and redistributed it across the linen through a radial opening.
Trivia
* Alfonso Bialetti is the grandfather of Alberto Alessi of
Alessi (the famous Italian design house).
* Some patents describe this machine as an "apparatus for domestic use to prepare hot drinks by steam jet, in particular to prepare 'Italian Cappuccino'".
"Patent: CA 1218858"
, ''Canadian Patents Database'', 2008-08-27. Retrieved on 2008-08-28
See also
*Pressure cooking
Pressure cooking is the process of cooking food under high pressure steam and water or a water-based cooking liquid, in a sealed vessel known as a ''pressure cooker''. High pressure limits boiling, and creates higher cooking temperatures which c ...
Notes
External links
Bialetti.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bialetti, Alfonso
20th-century Italian engineers
Italian industrial designers
Italian designers
1888 births
1970 deaths
Bialetti