WASHINGTON, Dec. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
AMERICA PERKS UP
Profile America — Saturday, December 26th. The millions of Americans who for a century and a half have enjoyed well-brewed coffee can direct their gratitude to James H. Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts. He received the nation's first patent for a coffee percolator on this date in 1865. The percolator still has a market niche, but since the 1970s has been overtaken by automatic drip coffee makers, and increasingly, the elaborate variants of espresso brewers. One-point-five million metric tons of coffee and its extracts and preparations are imported annually. The vast majority of that is unroasted coffee, and its import value is about $440 million a month. You can find current data on the country's economy by downloading the 'America's Economy' mobile application atwww.census.gov/mobile.
Sources:
Kane's Famous First Facts, 3850
Patent/accessed 10/16/2015: http://www.google.com/patents/US51741
Quantity of coffee imports/accessed 10/16/2015:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/US_Food_Imports/__Value_of_US_food_impor
ts_detailed_tables_by_food_group/Coffeet2_1_.xlsx
Value of coffee imports: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/exh8.pdf
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
