1930

In the early 20th Century clocks were increasingly combined with other appliances, from barometers and thermometers to lamps and wirelesses. By 1930 this trend had resulted in a renewed interest in tea making appliances.

In 1930 instrument maker and inventor Ron Grumble of Eltham, Kent, made a highly desirable automatic tea maker, the "Early Morning Waiter", using both gas and electricity. It reverted to Rowbottom's tube-fed principal.

His machine comprises a wooden plinth on which the entire apparatus is mounted. A separate combined clock and timeswitch is also shown.

A cylindrical brass vessel was filled with water. The vessel sits on top of a gas burner fitted with a pilot jet which is lit the night before. A the preset time the electric alarm clock triggered a solenoid in a glass box which opened a gas valve to heat the water. Gas was supplied to the ring, where it was immediately lit by the pilot light. When the water boiled, steam pressure forced it through a spout to a Crown Derby teapot sitting on a counterbalanced arm. When the pot was full its weight sank the arm, cutting off the gas and operating a switch to ring an electric bell hidden under the baseboard.

This luxury device never went into production, but within a few years the growing availablity of mains electricity changed the entire face of automatic tea making.

The example of Grumble's Gas Heated Early Morning Waiter pictured here is on display in the London Science Museum. It was presented to the Museum by Mrs D. Grumble of London SW12 in 1969.