There’s something most people don’t know about espresso: almost none of its defining elements were planned. The crema, the 9 bars, the pre-infusion — all of it emerged from accidents, business disputes, and practical solutions to concrete problems. This is the real story.
1901 — The problem was speed
It all starts with a productivity problem, not a flavor one. At the turn of the 20th century, Italian cafés were slow. Making a cup of coffee took minutes, and the lines didn’t wait.
Milanese engineer Luigi Bezzera patented the first commercially viable espresso machine on December 19, 1901: a device that used steam pressure to force hot water through ground coffee in seconds. He introduced the removable portafilter, multiple group heads, and the idea of preparing coffee “on the spot” — one espresso per person, instantly.
There’s an antecedent few people know about: Angelo Moriondo patented a similar machine in Turin on May 16, 1884 and won a bronze medal at the Turin General Expo that same year. But Moriondo never industrialized it — he only built a few by hand for his own establishments. Bezzera was the first to make it practical and replicable.
The resulting coffee was functional but imperfect: pressurized steam exceeded 100°C, which burned the coffee and produced a bitter, complex-free cup. But it was fast, and that was what mattered.
Desiderio Pavoni bought Bezzera’s patent in 1903 and two years later, in 1905, founded La Pavoni — one of the oldest espresso brands still in existence. Pavoni added two pieces that are still part of the espresso DNA: the steam release valve so the barista wouldn’t burn themselves removing the portafilter, and the steam wand to access the steam built up in the boiler — the part that years later would make milk drinks possible. The machines of that era are works of industrial art: bronze, brass, visible steam. The aesthetic of early 20th-century European café culture.
1938-1948 — The accident that changed everything
Achille Gaggia was a barista in Milan, not an engineer. On September 5, 1938 he filed patent nº 365726 for a machine called Lampo — the first steamless espresso mechanism. The idea: instead of steam, use a spring-loaded lever to pressurize the water. The lever pulled downward, compressed a spring, and that spring pushed water through the coffee at high pressure — no need to bring it to steam temperatures. Legend has it he was inspired by the hydraulic piston of a U.S. Army Jeep he saw in Milan during the postwar years.
The result was unexpected in more ways than one.
First: the lever pressure (~8-10 bars, depending on the spring mechanics and lever size — never a calculated number) extracted coffee at lower temperatures and produced a more complex drink, with acidity and sweetness that steam had never achieved.
Second: something appeared on the surface that nobody had seen before. A dense layer, caramel-golden in color, of fine persistent bubbles. Crema.
The first customers didn’t know what to make of it. They asked Gaggia what the “schiuma” (foam/scum) on their coffee was. His competitors called it waste. Gaggia, in one of the best marketing moves in coffee history, started calling it “caffè crema naturale” — coffee so good it produces its own cream. The narrative worked. Today crema is synonymous with espresso quality.
Gaggia patented his hydraulic lever system in 1947 and began commercial production of the Tipo Classica in 1948. And here’s a detail most people don’t know: the manufacturer that built the Gaggia machine was Faema. In fact, Gaggia and Carlo Ernesto Valente jointly founded “Officine Faema Brevetti Gaggia” — the 1948 Tipo Classica came out of Faema’s workshops. The same company that would later become its greatest competitor.
1961 — The eclipse and the electric pump
Carlo Ernesto Valente, founder of Faema (1945, Milan), had built Gaggia’s machines. But he had a different vision for the market: where Gaggia saw espresso as a luxury product for specialized establishments, Valente saw an opportunity to democratize it. Their business relationship ended.
Valente went to work on something completely new.
On February 15, 1961, there was a total solar eclipse visible from Europe. That same day, Faema launched its new machine: the E61. The “E” comes from eclisse (eclipse in Italian), the 61 from the year. A name that captures exactly the historical moment it appeared.
The E61 introduced three innovations that transformed espresso forever:
The electric rotary pump. Instead of the barista’s force pulling a lever, an electric motor pressurizes the water constantly. The pump was engineered to replicate the ~9 bars that Gaggia’s levers produced — that number was already the de facto standard, so there was no reason to change it. What changed was that any barista, at any level of physical strength, could produce the same pressure every time.
Automatic pre-infusion. Before activating the pump at full pressure, the E61 allows line water (~2-3 bars) to saturate the coffee for a few seconds. This hydrates the puck evenly and reduces channeling. Gaggia did it manually and inconsistently; the E61 automated it.
The thermosiphon. An internal circuit where hot water circulates continuously between the boiler and the group, keeping temperature stable without the barista needing to “flush” water before each shot. Before this, the group cooled between extractions and the first shot of the day was notoriously worse than the ones that followed.
The E61 was an immediate and massive success. Not just for its technical innovations, but because it democratized quality: you no longer needed a barista with strong arms and perfect lever technique to make good espresso.
Why the E61 is still alive today
More than 60 years later, the E61 group design remains the standard for semi-professional machines. Brands like Lelit, ECM, Rocket Espresso, Bezzera (yes, the direct descendant of the 1901 brand), and many others use E61 groups or direct derivatives.
Why hasn’t it evolved further? Because it’s hard to improve something that already works very well. The thermosiphon remains an elegant solution for thermal stability. The group design allows easy maintenance and exceptional longevity — there are E61s from the 70s and 80s still running perfectly with basic maintenance.
Modern innovations (digital PID, pressure profiling, flow control) are added on top of the E61 design, not in its place.
What this means for your extraction
Knowing this history changes how you think about every variable on your machine:
When you adjust temperature on your PID, you’re doing what Gaggia couldn’t — controlling precisely what he resolved empirically through years of trial and error. When you pre-infuse, you’re using a technique that Ernesto Valente automated in 1961. When you chase that perfect mouse-tail at 9 bars, you’re calibrating the same pressure that a spring lever accidentally produced in 1948 Milan.
Espresso is an accumulation of fortunate accidents, turned into standard by time and tradition. Your job as a barista is to master those accidents well enough to reproduce them with intention.