About 100 years ago, Alfonso Bialetti sat in the courtyard of his workshop for the manufacture of aluminum semi-finished products and watched a laundress struggle in the distance. The factory was new – Bialetti had worked in the aluminium industry in France for 10 years and then opened a workshop in his homeland Italy. A workshop for the study, design and creation of finished, ready-to-sell products. Watching the laundress Bialetti noticed her washing machine, where soapy water in a closed container rose up in the machine and cleaned clothes in this way. “Why not use the same process in coffee-making - that would make it much easier,” thought Bialetti.

It took 15 years, and the first working prototype of Moka Express was available and patented. This changed the coffee culture – before that, making good aromatic coffee was complicated, equipment large and cumbersome, and it was mainly made in a cafe. The Moka pot brought good coffee to homes.

The breakthrough was made a while later, namely in the 1950-s, when Renato, the inventor's son, took the lead in the company. When dad had sold 70,000 Moka Pots by then, which isn't a bad result either, then the son managed to raise sales by over a million units in a year. The main design of the Moka Express has remained recognisably similar to this day and has become one of the best-known icons of Italian design, which can now be found at New York's Museum of Modern Art.