History and culture
The history of instant coffee
Multiple inventors developed soluble coffee processes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; instant coffee saw mass adoption during the two World Wars, when it was distributed as part of military rations.
Each section below is labelled by how well-established its claims are — look for the label under each heading.
Early soluble coffee processes
Disputed among historians · late 19th to early 20th century
Several inventors in different countries are documented as having developed early soluble ('instant') coffee processes around the turn of the 20th century. Priority claims for who first invented a commercially viable process are disputed between multiple figures and patents from this period, and no single account is universally accepted as definitive.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica coffee and coffeehouse history entries; The World Atlas of Coffee
Wartime adoption
Documented history · 1914–1945
Instant coffee is documented as having seen large-scale production and distribution during the First and Second World Wars, when its shelf stability and ease of preparation made it well suited to military rations, significantly expanding its consumer market afterward.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica coffee and coffeehouse history entries; The World Atlas of Coffee
Related
Preparation traditions
How this history is practised today, in CoffeeHQ's international preparation atlas.
Where it was drunk
The institutions this history runs through, in CoffeeHQ's coffeehouse-history layer.
- The Korean dabang — The Korean coffeehouse of the twentieth century — a tearoom by name that ran on coffee, incubated modernist writers under colonial rule, became a music venue with a resident DJ in the 1970s, and was largely finished off by vending machines and espresso chains.