科技資訊:誰發明了法式壓濾咖啡壺?
"From the beginning, the French devoted more attention than any other people to coffee brewing," William Harrison Ukers wrote in "All About Coffee," published in 1922. The first French coffee maker appeared around 1800, Ukers claimed, and the first one made of glass followed 40 years later. Though Ukers's encyclopedic work defined dozens of devices, it never mentioned the simple plunger-style vessel that we've come to call the "French press."
“從一開始，法國人對煮咖啡就比別人都用心，”威廉·哈里森·阿克斯(William Harrison Ukers)在1922年的《關於咖啡的一切》(All About Coffee)中寫道。他說，第一個法式咖啡壺是在1800年左右出現，四十年後，又出現了第一個玻璃咖啡壺。儘管阿克斯百科全書式的作品描述了幾十種器具，卻沒提到那種泵狀裝置，也就是我們今天所謂的“法式壓濾壺”(French press)。That coffee maker — known as the cafetière in Britain — wasn't popular until after Ukers's death, but the technology was around long before he wrote his book. In March 1852, a Paris metalsmith and a merchant received a joint patent for "the filtering of coffee by means of a piston." The patent described a rod attached to a piece of tin pierced with holes and sandwiched between two layers of flannel. The rod would be pressed by hand into a cylindrical vessel. "By lowering the piston," the inventors wrote, "filtered coffee is obtained above it, perfectly clear."
這種咖啡壺在英式英語中被稱爲"cafetière"，到阿克斯去世後才流行起來，但這種技術卻早在他寫書之前就有了。1852年3月，一個法國的金屬加工技工和一個商人因“以活塞方式過濾咖啡”而聯合取得了一項專利。這項專利是用一根活杆連着一片帶有網眼，被兩層法蘭絨夾在中間的錫箔，用手把活杆壓入圓柱形容器內。發明者介紹：“向下壓動活塞，過濾後的咖啡就涌上來，非常清澈。”
But the French press did not become well known until the late 1920s, when a Milanese firm patented a version of the French invention. The company perfected the device in the years that followed: A version introduced in 1935 had a spring that wrapped around the plunger discs to hold them flush with the cylinder.
但是法式壓濾壺直到20世紀20年代才爲世人所知，當時一個米蘭工廠爲這項法國發明的一個版本申請專利。其後這家公司又改良了這種設備。1935年推出的一個型號有一個彈簧包裹在泵盤周圍，讓泵盤可以水平地壓入圓柱容器。
A similar design spread through Europe in the 1950s. But it took a while for the gadget to make its way to the United States, and still longer for it to gain its current appellation. (Even now, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the French press first and foremost as an exercise designed to "develop and strengthen the biceps.") As of the early 1980s, some Americans followed British usage and called it a cafetière; others used the phrase "French plunger-type." In 1993, Florence Fabricant explained the "French-press method" to readers of The New York Times as a favorite of connoisseurs. The method had one major drawback, she noted: "The coffee is sometimes muddy."
20世紀50年代，類似的設計開始在歐洲傳播開來。但過了一段時期，這個小玩意纔來到美國，又過了很久才獲得現在的名號（直至如今，《牛津英語詞典》中"French press"下的第一條解釋還是“鍛鍊和增強二頭肌的練習”的一種運動方式）。到了20世紀80年代初，有些美國人仿照英國人的說法，把它叫做"cafetière";有些人用“法式壓濾型咖啡壺”來稱呼它。1993年，弗洛倫斯·法布里肯特(Florence Fabricant)對《紐約時報》的讀者們解釋說，“法式壓濾法”是行家們的最愛。不過她說，這種方法有個重大缺點：“咖啡有時會有點渾濁”。
