![]() In 1902, the Barcolo Manufacturing Company – the company that eventually became Barcalounger – officially made a coffee break part of the benefits enjoyed by its employees. It was at just about the same time that a Buffalo, New York company made coffee break history. ![]() No one is quite sure if it actually shortened the coffee break time of his workers. Bezzera’s idea of forcing water through ground coffee under pressure launched a whole new way of making coffee. His idea worked far beyond his wildest imaginings – at least in terms of the machine. Figuring that if he could brew the coffee faster, his employees would drink up and get back to work more quickly, he hit upon the idea of using steam pressure to force hot water through the ground coffee. ![]() It happened in 1901, when an Italian factory owner named Luigi Bezzera was looking for a way to speed up his employees’ coffee break time. No one is quite sure when that break became associated with coffee, but the story of the invention of the espresso machine gives us a hint. Good employers have always known that a break from work increases productivity. Of course, we didn’t really need MIT to tell us that the coffee break, that time revered workplace tradition, is good for business. MIT thinks that the replay helps the rat to internalize the experience they’ve just had. Much more surprising, though, when the rat takes a break immediately after running a track, that precise sequence of electrical activity replays in its brain – in reverse, repeatedly, at about twenty times the speed. What they found was that as the rat runs the track, their brain cells fire in a particular sequence – and that precise sequence is repeated every time the rat runs the maze. The researchers wired rats so that they could view the electrical patterns firing in their brains while they ran through maze-like tracks. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently made a discovery that strongly suggests that coffee breaks – or at least, breaks from activity – are a necessary part of the learning process. The next time that your boss complains about the obligatory coffee break, point him in the direction of MIT.
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