The idea of an automated tea or coffee maker was a dream for gunsmith Frank Clark in 1902. He developed a unit that was basically a kettle and a mentholated spirits burner attached to an alarm clock. His gadget did work to some degree but was far too complicated to become popular.
In 1937 the Goblin company released their own automatic tea maker that they called the Teasmade (also known as teasmaid) that has now become very famous. Developed by Brenner Thornton, Goblin pushed a huge marketing campaign that included 250 in store demonstrators that possibly made this product, and the coffee machine, what it is today. It worked by electricity automatically heating an element in a special kettle. when the water boiled it decanted through a tube onto the tea in the pot, when the pot got heavy an alarm and light when on to announce that the tea was ready. The peak of their popularity came in the 1960s and 1970’s with several other UK companies manufacturing similar products under various names. Despite only Goblin’s product being called a Teasmade, the various other products in the marketplace were often also called a Teasmade as well, in the same way people from the UK would often call vacuuming the floor Hoovering.
Outside of the UK, The Teasmaid never really took off, it was a great idea but perhaps with the advent of automatic kettles, teabags and a growth in the popularity of coffee saw the demise of the Teasmaid. Today classic Goblin Teasmaid’s are much sort after by antique and technology collectors.
The Goblin Brand left the Teasmade market in the late 1990’s, their last product was a vacuum cleaner before their parent company phased out the Goblin name. Goblin’s once competitor in the Teasmade business (Swan), still produces Swan Teasmade’s in China exclusively for for the UK market.