Boigraphy – McKenna Hollingsworth

A very influential woman who helped led this charge was a German housewife who immigrated from the country of Germany. This strong and brilliant woman’s name was Melitta Bentz (1873-1950). She invented and patented the modern day filtering process for coffee drinkers, producers, and companies all over the world. This woman was born in Dresden, Germany in 1871 by the name of Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher.

(c) worldofbadasswomen.com [2015] A portrait photo of the great inventor and visionary Melitta Bentz. Her determination to find a better way of making coffee and her tenacity to take it to market completely changed the coffee industry.

She was born into a family of successful male business people. She moved to America along with her husband and they enjoyed the married life, well at least as much as she could. Coffee had become a staple in people’s diets by the year 1900. However, the process to make coffee was an ineffective way of doing so that took almost all of the enjoyment out of brewing coffee and drinking it with one’s diet because of the bitter taste and sandy texture the grinds created. Melitta saw that putting grinds in a cloth bag and putting it in hot boiling water wasn’t doing the trick, so one day “on a whim” her company website says, she poked holes in a brass cup with nails from her home. Then took a sheet of paper from her son’s school supplies to line the brass cup. Putting the grinds in the cup with the paper then pouring hot water through it created a coffee that tastes significantly more aromatic, there were no more grounds in the bottom of the cup, and preparation became fast and simple. In 1908 she filed a patent and started her own company which is still in business to this day. (All bibliographic information came from 5 Female Inventors Who Changed Life as We Know It and A Woman Full of Ideas and Drive)