Gaggia

Gaggia is an Italian manufacturer of coffee machines, especially espresso machines, in addition to small kitchen appliances. The company is owned by the Evoca Group.[1]

Gaggia has four main product lines. They market automatic espresso machines, manual espresso machines, accessories, and coffee beans under the Gaggia brand name.[2] The company continues to produce espresso machines (as well as accessories) from classic manual machines to the innovative semi-automatic and super-automatic models recently added to the line.[3]

History

The founder, Giovanni Achille Gaggia (1895–1961), applied for a patent (patent number 365726) for the first modern steamless coffee machine on 5 September 1938, to be used commercially in his coffee bar. The machine forced water to flow over the coffee grounds at a high pressure, producing the 'crema' that is unique to espresso.

The Gaggia company was founded in 1947 and formally incorporated in 1948. It first produced machines for commercial use, but shortly thereafter released the Gilda, its first home machine.

In popular culture

In Wolf Mankowitz’s 1957 short story ‘Expresso Bongo: The Story of the Making of a Modern Idol’ for the Daily Express,[12][13] the anonymous narrator frequents a fictional “expresso” bar in Frith Street, Soho called the ‘Tom-Tom’, at which his client Bongo Herbert is paid to perform, and which features “a pretty young man playing the Gaggia coffee machine with the dash of a theater organist,” providing crowds of customers with “café expresso and doughnuts” at one hour, and “pizzas and expressos” later. In an attempt to induce Garrick Records to sign his client, the narrator plies their “hard-to-get talent spotter” Mr. Mayer with “cappuccino” from the Gaggia.[14] Cultural historians Jingan Young and Stephen Glynn agree that the persistent “misspelling of espresso as ‘expresso’ [in Mankowitz’s story] acts as ‘a pun between the new Italian coffee and the commissioning newspaper [that] helped to cement the common error of pronouncing “expresso” instead of “espresso”.’”[15][13]

Mankowitz subsequently adapted his story into a 1958 West End musical of the same name; the play was a hit, and the original story was reprinted in The Atlantic. He then adapted the musical into a 1959 film starring Cliff Richard, in which a Gaggia machine features prominently.

In Don Sharp’s 1958 film, The Golden Disc, the heroine helps her aunt renovate her antiquated London café, transforming it into a hip espresso bar. The “most telling” moment in this process is “the ceremonial arrival of the Gaggia espresso machine” as the new centrepiece of the bar.[16]

The teenage narrator of Colin MacInnes’ 1959 novel Absolute Beginners details a Gaggia machine producing “cappuccino" in a contemporary Belgravia coffee bar.[17]

A Gaggia four-group lever machine is featured in Federico Fellini’s 1978 film Orchestra Rehearsal, during the scene in which the contrabass clarinettist is interviewed in the auditorium’s bar.[18] The peculiar method employed by the barista using the Gaggia machine subsequently became known as the ‘Fellini Move’ or ‘Fellini Manoeuvre’, used to induce pre-infusion or to introduce more volume into a shot than a single ‘pull’ from the machine would otherwise allow.[19]

A Gaggia commercial semi-automatic machine features in a scene in 1987’s The Living Daylights, when James Bond (Timothy Dalton) and Saunders (Thomas Wheatley) meet over espresso at the Prater Café in Vienna, just before Saunders is killed by SMERSH.[20]

type	Private
foundation	Robecco sul Naviglio, Italy, 1947
founder	Giovanni Achille GaggiaGiovanni Achille Gaggia (cropped).jpg(photographed c. 1953)
location	Gaggio Montano
location country	Italy
area served	Worldwide
industry	Domestic & professional espresso machines
products	Espresso Machines
parent	Evoca Group
homepage	Domestic coffee machines Professional coffee machines

History

In popular culture

See also

External links

References