Alchemy Machines

For centuries the alchemists chased one trick: turn something ordinary into something precious, and get rich doing it. None of them ever managed it. Then in 1938, in a workshop in Milan, an engineer named Achille Gaggia found a way to force near-boiling water through packed coffee at several atmospheres of pressure — and out came something thick, dark, and crowned with a foam nobody had seen before, later named crema. It wasn’t gold. It was better. Every espresso machine built since has performed the same small transmutation, water and bean turned into something worth queuing for before eight in the morning.