Below is list of dates of the history of coffee. Some of the dates are subjective, and not confirmed, they will have a * next to it. Dates are AD. Source from Uncommon grounds and various sources like: All about coffee, Wiki, ehow. After 1700, all dates regarding coffee retail we have excluded. We stopped the history at 1900 since the dates get quite intense then.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 575* | first cultivation of coffee in Yemen |
| 900* | Famous Arabian physician, Rhazes, is first writer to mention coffee under the name bunca or bunchum. |
| 1000* | Mahommedan physician and philosopher, Avicenna, is the first writer to explain the medicinal properties of the coffee bean, which he also calls bunchum. |
| 1258* | Sheik Omar, disciple of Sheik Schadheli, patron saint and legendary founder of Mocha, by chance discovers coffee as a beverage at Ousab in Arabia |
| 1300* | The coffee drink is a decoction made from roasted berries, crushed in a mortar and pestle, the powder being placed in boiling water, and the drink taken down, grounds and all. |
| 1350* | Persian, Egyptian, and Turkish ewers made of pottery are first used for serving coffee. |
| 1400–1500 | Earthenware or metal coffee-roasting plates with small holes, rounded and shaped like a skimmer, come into use in Turkey and Persia over braziers. Also about this time appears the familiar Turkish cylinder coffee mill, and the original Turkish coffee boiler of metal. |
| 1428–48 | Spice grinder to stand on four legs first invented; subsequently used to grind coffee |
| 1454* | Sheik Gemaleddin, mufti of Aden, having discovered the virtues of the berry on a journey to Abyssinia, sanctions the use of coffee in Arabia Felix |
| 1470–1500 | The use of coffee spreads to Mecca and Medina. |
| 1471* | First known coffee shop opens in Constantinople |
| 1500–1600 | Shallow iron dippers with long handles and small foot-rests come into use in Bagdad and in Mesopotamia for roasting coffee. |
| 1505* | The Arabs introduce the coffee plant into Ceylon. |
| 1510 | The coffee drink is introduced into Cairo. |
| 1511 | Kair Bey, governor of Mecca, after consultation with a council of lawyers, physicians, and leading citizens, issues a condemnation of coffee, and prohibits the use of the drink. Prohibition subsequently ordered revoked by the sultan of Cairo |
| 1517 | Sultan Selim I, after conquering Egypt, brings coffee to Constantinople |
| 1524 | The kadi of Mecca closes the public coffee houses because of disorders, but permits coffee drinking at home and in private. His successor allows them to re-open under license |
| 1530/2* | Coffee drinking introduced into Damascus. and Aleppo |
| 1534 | A religious fanatic denounces coffee in Cairo and leads a mob against the coffee houses, many of which are wrecked. The city is divided into two parties, for and against coffee; but the chief judge, after consultation with the doctors, causes coffee to be served to the meeting, drinks some himself, and thus settles the controversy. |
| 1542 | Soliman II, at the solicitation of a favorite court lady, forbids the use of coffee, but to no purpose |
| 1554 | The first coffee houses are opened in Constantinople by Shemsi of Damascus and Hekem of Aleppo |
| 1570–80* | Religious zealots in Constantinople, jealous of the increasing popularity of the coffee houses, claim roasted coffee to be a kind of charcoal, and the mufti decides that it is forbidden by the law. Amurath III subsequently orders the closing of all coffee houses, on religious grounds, classing coffee with wine, forbidden by the Koran. The order is not strictly observed, and coffee drinking continues behind closed shop-doors and in private houses |
| 1573 | Rauwolf, German physician and botanist, first European to mention coffee, makes a journey to the Levant |
| 1580 | Prospero Alpini (Alpinus), Italian physician and botanist, journeys to Egypt and brings back news of coffee |
| 1582–83 | The first printed reference to coffee appears as chaube in Rauwolf’s Travels, published in German at Frankfort and Lauingen. |
| 1585 | Gianfraneesco Morosini, city magistrate in Constantinople, reports to the Venetian senate the use by the Turks “of a black water, being the infusion of a bean called cavee.” |
| 1587 | The first authentic account of the origin of coffee is written by the Sheihk Abd-al-Kâdir, in an Arabian manuscript preserved in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris. Listing most of the dates above |
| 1592 | The first printed description of the coffee plant (called bon) and drink (called caova) appears in Prospero Alpini’s work The Plants of Egypt, written in Latin, and published in Venice. |
| 1596* | Belli sends to the botanist de l’Écluse “seeds used by the Egyptians to make a liquid they call cave.” |
| 1598 | The first printed reference to coffee in English appears as chaoua in a note of Paludanus in Linschoten’s Travels, translated from the Dutch, and published in London, believed to be the origin of the Englsih word coffee |
| 1599 | Sir Antony Sherley, first Englishman to refer to coffee drinking in the Orient, sails from Venice for Aleppo |
| 1600* | Pewter serving-pots appear. Coffee cultivation introduced into southern India at Chickmaglur, Mysore, by a Moslem pilgrim, Baba Budan, who is thought to have smuggled the coffee seed in from the Yemen.Baba Budan |
| 1600 | Iron spiders on legs, designed to sit in open fires, are used for roasting coffee |
| 1600–32 | Mortars and pestles of wood, and of metal (iron, bronze, and brass) come into common use in Europe for making coffee powder. |
| 1601 | Printed reference to coffee in English, employing the more modern form of the word, appears in W. Parry’s book, Sherley’s Travels, as “a certain liquor which they call coffe.” |
| 1602 | The Dutch East India Company VOC, granted 21 year monopoly on trade from colonial activities in Asia, they controlled the coffee trade until the mid 1700’s. With Amsterdam being the main trading market of coffee established later |
| 1603 | Captain John Smith, English adventurer, and founder of the colony of Virginia, in his book of travels published this year, refers to the Turks’ drink, “coffa.” |
| 1614 | Dutch traders visit Aden to examine into the possibilities of coffee cultivation and coffee trading |
| 1615 | Coffee is introduced into Venice |
| 1616 | The first coffee is brought from Mocha to Holland by Pieter Van dan Broecke |
| 1620 | Peregrine White’s wooden mortar and pestle (used for “braying” coffee) is brought to America on the Mayflower by White’s parents |
| 1623–27 | Francis Bacon, in his Historia Vitae et Mortis (1623), speaks of the Turks’ “caphe”; and in his Sylva Sylvarum (1627) writes: “They have in Turkey a drink called coffa made of a berry of the same name, as black as soot, and of a strong scent … this drink comforteth the brain and heart, and helpeth digestion.” |
| 1625 | Bad news for coffee lovers sugar is first used to sweeten coffee in Cairo. |
| 1637 | Coffee drinking is introduced into England by Nathaniel Conopios, a Cretan student at Balliol College, Oxford |
| 1640 | Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum, publishes the first botanical description of the coffee plant in English—referred to as “Arbor Bon cum sua Buna. The Turkes Berry Drinke.” The Dutch merchant, Wurffbain, offers for sale in Amsterdam the first commercial shipment of coffee from Mocha. |
| 1644 | Coffee is introduced into France at Marseilles by P. de la Roque, who brought back also from Constantinople the instruments and vessels for making it |
| 1645 | Coffee comes into general use in Italy, and the first coffee house is opened in Venice |
| 1647 | Adam Olearius publishes in German his Persian Voyage Description, containing an account of coffee manners and customs in Persia in 1633–39 |
| 1650* | Varnar, Dutch minister resident at the Ottoman Porte, publishes a treatise on coffee.
The individual hand-turned metal (tin-plate or tinned copper) roaster appears; shaped like the Turkish coffee grinder, for use over open fires. |
| 1650 | The first coffee house in England is opened at Oxford by Jacobs. The same year Coffee is introduced into Vienna, by Franz Kulczycki |
| 1652 | The first London coffee house is opened by Pasqua Rosée in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. The first printed advertisement for coffee in English appears in the form of a handbill issued by Pasqua Rosée, acclaiming “The Vertue of the Coffee Drink.” |
| 1656 | Grand Vizier Kuprili, during the war with Candia, and for political reasons, suppresses the coffee houses and prohibits coffee. For the first violation the punishment is cudgelling; for a second, the offender is sewn up in a leather bag and thrown into the Bosporus |
| 1657 | The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appears in The Public Adviser of London. The same year Jean de Thévenot introduces coffee privately into Paris |
| 1658 | The Dutch begin the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon |
| 1660* | The first French commercial importation of coffee arrives in bales at Marseilles from Egypt. Nieuhoff, Dutch ambassador to China, is the first to make a trial of coffee with milk, in imitation of tea with milk. |
| 1660 | Coffee is first mentioned in the English statute books when a duty of four pence is laid upon every gallon made and sold “to be paid by the maker.” Elford’s “white iron” machine for roasting coffee is much used in England, being “turned on a spit by a jack.” |
| 1662 | Coffee is roasted in Europe over charcoal fires without flame, in ovens, and on stoves; being “browned in uncovered earthenware tart dishes, old pudding pans, fry pans.” |
| 1663 | All English coffee houses are required to be licensed. Regular imports of Mocha coffee begin at Amsterdam. |
| 1671 | First time the Kaldi fable appears |
| 1670 | Coffee is roasted in larger quantities in small closed sheet-iron cylinders having long iron handles designed to turn them in open fireplaces. First used in Holland. Later, in France, England, and the United States.
The first attempt to grow coffee in Europe at Dijon, France, results in failure. Coffee is introduced into Germany. Coffee is first sold in Boston |
| 1671 | The first coffee house in France is opened in Marseilles in the neighborhood of the Exchange.
The first authoritative printed treatise devoted solely to coffee, written in Latin by Faustus Nairon, professor of Oriental languages, Rome, is published in that city. First printed treatise in French, largely devoted to coffee, Concerning the Use of Coffee, Tea and Chocolate, by Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, purporting to be a translation from the Latin, is published at Lyons. |
| 1672 | Pascal, an Armenian, first sells coffee publicly at St. Germain’s fair, Paris, and opens the first Parisian coffee house. Great silver coffee pots (with all the utensils belonging to them of the same metal) are used at St.-Germain’s fair, Paris. |
| 1674 | The Women’s Petition Against Coffee is published in London, and Coffee is introduced into Sweden. |
| 1675 | as a result of the petition Charles II issues a proclamation to close all London coffee houses as places of sedition. Order revoked on petition of the traders in 1676. However coffee houses convert slowly to Opium dens. |
| 1679* | The first coffee house in Germany is opened by an English merchant at Hamburg, see below for conflicting date. |
| 1683 | Coffee is sold publicly in New York, and Kolschitzky opens the first coffee house in Vienna. |
| 1685 | Café au lait is first recommended for use as a medicine by Sieur Monin, a celebrated physician of Grenoble, France. |
| 1686 | John Ray, one of the first English botanists to extol the virtues of coffee in a scientific treatise, publishes his Universal Botany of Plants in London. |
| 1686 | The first coffee house is opened in Regensburg, Germany. |
| 1689 | Café de Procope, the first real French café, is opened in Paris by François Procope, a Sicilian, coming from Florence. First coffee house opened in Boston |
| 1691 | Portable coffee-making outfits to fit the pocket find favor in France. |
| 1692 | The “lantern” straight-line coffee pot with true cone lid, thumb-piece, and handle fixed at right angle to the spout, is introduced into England, succeeding the curved Oriental serving pot. |
| 1694 | The first coffee house is opened in Leipzig, Germany. |
| 1696 | The first coffee house (The King’s Arms) is opened in New York. The first coffee seedlings are brought from Kananur, on the Malabar coast, and introduced into Java at Kedawoeng, near Batavia (VOC base), but not long afterward are destroyed by flood. |
| 1699 | The second shipment of coffee plants from Malabar to Java by Henricus Zwaardecroon becomes the progenitors of all the Arabica coffee trees in the Dutch East Indies. Galland’s translation of the earliest Arabian manuscript on coffee appears in Paris under the title, Concerning the First Use of Coffee and the Progress It Afterward Made. |
| 1700 | Ye coffee house, the first in Philadelphia, is built by Samuel Carpenter. |
| 1701 | Coffee pots appear in England with perfect domes and bodies less tapering. |
| 1704 | Bull’s machine for roasting coffee, probably the first to use coal for commercial roasting, is patented in England. |
| 1706 | The first samples of Java coffee, and a coffee plant grown in Java, are received at the Amsterdam botanical gardens./td> |
| 1711 | Java coffee for Indonesia is first sold at public auction in Amsterdam. A novelty in coffee-making is introduced into France by infusing the ground beans in a fustian (linen) bag. |
| 1714 | A coffee plant, raised from seed of the plant received at the Amsterdam botanical gardens in 1706, is presented to Louis XIV of France, and is nurtured in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. |
| 1715 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Haiti and Santo Domingo. |
| 1715–17 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) by a sea captain of St. Malo, who brings the plants from Mocha by direction of the French Company of the Indies |
| 1718 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Surinam by the Dutch. |
| 1722 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Cayenne, from Surinam. |
| 1723 | The first coffee plantation started in the Portuguese colony of Pará, Brazil, with plants brought from Cayenne (French Guiana) results in failure. Gabriel de Clieu, Norman captain of infantry, sails from France, accompanied by one of the seedlings of the Java tree presented to Louis XIV, and with it shares his drinking water on a protracted voyage to Martinique, the start of coffee plantations in South America. |
| 1727 | Coffee beans are sold in Brazil, and the first coffee plantation appears |
| 1730 | The English bring the cultivation of coffee to Jamaica.. |
| 1732 | The British Parliament seeks to encourage the cultivation of coffee in British possessions in America by reducing the inland duty. |
| 1737 | The Merchants’ coffee house is established in New York; by some called the true cradle of American liberty and the birthplace of the Union. |
| 1740 | Coffee culture is introduced into the Philippines from Java by Spanish missionaries. |
| 1748 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Cuba by Don José Antonio Gelabert. |
| 1750 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Celebes from Java. |
| 1752 | Intensive coffee cultivation is resumed in the Portuguese colonies in Pará and Amazonas, Brazil. |
| 1755 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Porto Rico from Martinique.. |
| 1760 | Decoction, or boiling, of coffee in France is generally replaced by the infusion method. |
| 1760 | João Alberto Castello Branco plants in Rio de Janeiro the first coffee tree brought to Brazil from Goa, Portuguese India. |
| 1761 | Brazil exempts coffee from export duty. |
| 1763 | Donmartin, a tinsmith of St. Benoit, France, invents a novel coffee pot, the inside of which is “filled by a fine flannel sack put in its entirety.” It has a tap to draw the coffee. |
| 1770 | Chicory is first used with coffee in Holland. |
| 1770–73 | Coffee cultivation begins in Rio, Minãs, and São Paulo. |
| 1774 | Molke, a Belgian monk, introduces the coffee plant from Surinam into the garden of the Capuchin monastery at Rio de Janeiro. |
| 1779 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Costa Rica from Cuba by the Spanish voyager, Navarro. |
| 1784 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Venezuela by seed from Martinique. |
| 1784 | A prohibition against the use of coffee, except by the rich, is issued by Maximilian Frederick, elector of Cologne. |
| 1789 | The first import duty on coffee, two and a half cents a pound, is levied by the United States. |
| 1790 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Mexico from the West Indies. |
| 1790 | The first wholesale coffee-roasting plant in the United States begins operation at 4 Great Dock Street, New York. |
| 1790 | The first United States advertisement for coffee appears in the New York Daily Advertiser. |
| 1798 | The first United States patent for an improved coffee-grinding mill is granted to Thomas Bruff, Sr. |
| 1806 | The first French patent on an improved French drip coffee pot for making coffee by filtration, without boiling, is granted to Hadrot. The coffee percolator (really an improved French drip coffee pot) is invented by Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), an expatriated American scientist, in Paris. |
| 1809 | The first importation of Brazil coffee by the United States arrives at Salem, Mass. Maybe as a result Coffee becomes an article of commerce in Brazil |
| 1819 | Morize, a Paris tinsmith, invents a double drip reversible coffee pot. That same year Laurens is granted a French patent on the original pumping-percolator device in which the boiling water was raised by steam pressure and sprayed over the ground coffee |
| 1820 | Peregrine Williamson, Baltimore, is granted the first United States patent for an improvement on a coffee roaster. |
| 1820 | Another early form of the French percolator is patented by Gaudet, a Paris tinsmith. |
| 1822 | Nathan Reed, Belfast, Me., is granted a United States patent on a coffee huller. |
| 1824 | Richard Evans is granted a patent in England for a commercial method of roasting coffee, comprising a cylinder sheet-iron roaster fitted with improved flanges for mixing, a hollow tube and trier for sampling the coffee while roasting, and a means for turning the roaster completely over to empty it. |
| 1825 | The pumping percolator, working by steam pressure and by partial vacuum, comes into vogue in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. Coffee cultivation is introduced into Hawaii from Rio de Janeiro. |
| 1827 | The first patent for a really practicable French coffee percolator is granted to Jacques Augustin Gandais, a manufacturer of plated jewellery in Paris. |
| 1840 | Central America begins shipping coffee to the United States. The English begin to cultivate coffee in India. |
| 1850* | The cultivation of coffee is introduced into Guatemala. |
| 1852 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Salvador from Cuba. |
| 1860 | Alexius Van Gulpen begins the manufacture of a green-coffee-grading machine at Emmerich, Germany. |
| 1869 | The coffee-leaf disease is first noticed in Ceylon. |
| 1875 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into Guatemala. |
| 1877 | The first French patent on a gas coffee roaster is issued to Roure of Marseilles. |
| 1878 | Coffee cultivation is introduced into British Central Africa. Chase & Sanborn, the Boston coffee roasters, are the first to pack and ship roasted coffee in sealed containers. |
| 1879 | A new gas coffee roaster is invented in England by Fleury & Barker. |
| 1881 | New York Coffee Exchange is incorporated. |
| 1887 | Coffee exchanges are opened in Amsterdam and Hamburg. Coffee made its way to Tonkin, Indo-China. |
| 1890 | Coffee exchanges are opened in Antwerp, London, and Rotterdam. |
| 1896 | Coffee was taken to Queensland, Australia. |
| 1901 | Luigi Bezzera filed a patent for an ‘espresso’ machine. Which Desiderio Pavoni purchased in 1903. |
