Annoyed People Are The Inventors Of The World
"Why does it have to be this way?" is the birdcall of the inventor.
As a HUGE coffee drinker, I love this story about a German housewife from FEE's Lawrence W. Reed:
Melitta Bentz was 35 in 1908 and frustrated with grounds in her coffee. It was a common complaint but one the rest of the world seemed willing to tolerate. Percolators of the day over-brewed coffee at the expense of its taste, imparting an annoying bitter flavor. Linen rags would retain the grounds but were messy and required frequent cleaning. Surely, something else could provide an appealing compromise, she thought, and be quicker, easier and cleaner.She experimented with several materials. She wasn't satisfied with any of them until she grabbed some blotting paper from her son's school book, punctured it multiple times with a nail, put it in a brass pot she filled with coffee grounds, then poured hot water over it. Bingo! No bitterness, no grounds! It was an instant hit with her friends, switching on the proverbial light in Melitta's entrepreneurial brain.
Melitta was granted a patent for her filter in July 1908 and within months, her company was up and running with its initial four employees: Melitta herself plus her husband Hugo and sons Willy and Horst. Producing filters at first within their home, they sold more than a thousand of them at the Leipzig Fair in 1909. Demand for the simple, newfangled invention exploded thereafter. In 1936, Melitta improvised her original design and turned her filter into the now-famous cone shape with which we are all familiar.
Production of the filters was paused briefly by World Wars I and II but surged again afterwards in each case. But for those interruptions, the family-owned business flourished for decades, even after Melitta's death in 1950. Today it employs thousands in Germany, Florida and New Jersey.
Of course, this sort of invention and all sorts of inventions are fostered by that horror of the Bernie Bros, capitalism.
When you can actually profit from your work, you're encouraged to work in a way you aren't likely to be when you work and the profits get yanked from you and distributed to people whose only contribution was breathing and otherwise existing in the same country as you.
all sorts of inventions are fostered by that horror of the Bernie Bros, capitalism
A command and control economy (CCE) run by top men! would never, ever see the need for such an invention. Even if the agreed that coffee grounds were an annoyance, it wouldn't be enough to justify using the brain power to come up with a solution.
I've seen some tweets that bemoan the fact that there are 40 (or more?) flavors of Pringles chips, but we can't have enough ventilators to handle a major respiratory pandemic. A CCE wouldn't have fared any better, and in my estimation, would have ordered the Fords and Dyson's of the world to not produce ventilators.
In a CCE, people are cheap. Not meeting your five year plan is not.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 15, 2020 6:45 AM
CCEs are obsessed with efficiency. That means having only enough medical machines available to meet existing demand. That's why it takes weeks to get an MRI scan in Canada, but days in the US. The US has, from a CCE perspective, an inefficient number of MRIs - too many of them sitting idle.
Conan the Grammarian at April 15, 2020 7:55 AM
God bless Melitta, she saved me from auto-drip. I can recommend a 15:1 ratio for freshly-ground medium roast.
If I'm only having one cup it had damned well better be a good one, and that ain't auto-drip coffee-flavored beverine turned grey with creamium powder.
My lawyer friend disagrees, but he's a lawyer.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 15, 2020 8:19 AM
Trying to make her sister feel better, Mercedes said, "There's no reason to be jealous of me, Melitta. People LOVE your little paper filter!"
JD at April 15, 2020 9:01 AM
“If I'm only having one cup it had damned well better be a good one, and that ain't auto-drip coffee-flavored beverine turned grey with creamium powder.”
In Japan they sell a powered creamer in a yellow foil bag with red letters. The brand name is *Creep*. I found the name fitting.
Isab at April 15, 2020 10:37 AM
I can recommend a 15:1 ratio
15 parts coffee, 1 part water? that explains much. Maybe it's not Gog who posts, but rather Gog's coffee. Has it achieved sentience? pass the Turing test??
I for one welcome our coffee overlord.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 15, 2020 11:07 AM
Sometimes Japan is just weird.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 15, 2020 11:09 AM
CCEs are obsessed with efficiency.
Yes. If a CCE built cell phones, the population of that nation would have *checks notes* one cell phone model, and it would be a Blackberry.
Hey, if it's good enough for Hillary! it's good enough for you peons!
I R A Darth Aggie at April 15, 2020 11:11 AM
"15 parts coffee, 1 part water"
Now that's a brilliant alternative to any number of spreads. Vegemite in particular.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 15, 2020 12:18 PM
I know inventors and people who have started a business. None of them would have done it without the rewards. Politicians who say stupid things like Bernie have never created anything or run a business.
cc at April 15, 2020 1:59 PM
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