Most people think of the coffee pot as the thing where you put coffee in a filter, and water in the back.

Then you turn it on and it makes coffee, right? Well, if you want to get technical, the only part of that machine that is a coffee pot is the actual.

A coffee pot is like a pan or a kettle, a pot used in the making or holding of coffee. Coffee pots come in a variety of styles and materials. There are the familiar glass pots that might be found on a drip coffee maker, metal percolators in which boiling water is used to make the coffee, or the carafe type brought to your table at a diner that keeps coffee hot for refills.

Coffee is usually served hot unless you are exclusively a fan of iced coffee, so some coffee pots used for serving are insulated to keep the coffee nice and hot until you’re ready to drink it.

Nowadays, several companies manufacture coffee pots. Mr. Coffee, Braun, Krups and many others have helped make their names through coffee. Some of these companies are also suppliers of industrial sized coffee makers and pots used at places like Starbucks. As modern as these machines are, it’s interesting that the coffee post was invented all the way back in 1818 in Paris. A man named Laurens came up with the first percolator type pot. In America it was sometimes called the cowboy pot because of all the pioneers and citizens of the frontier that used them around the campfire. Coffee pots have come a long way since then.