Modern machines for making juices use massive hydraulic presses to apply tremendous pressure on the fruit. They press the fruit inside out to extract its juice and it can be quite a brutal sight to see. Nevertheless, the process is exceptionally fast, and juice is delivered by the hundreds of gallons in a mater of minutes, extracted from vast amounts of fruit. It’s difficult to imagine a hand juicer extracting such large volumes of juices in so short a time. The process of making juice with a hand juicer is very slow.

That famous hand juicer is known to us all. Yes, the one that had a little upside down spiky orange in its middle, which looked like an island in the middle of a jug that would collect the extracted juice, was very popular and much in demand. This was probably the original hand juicer produced on a large scale. Different materials like metal or glass were used. The fruit was cut in half and its fleshy part was squeezed over the upside down orange and juice was collected into the little jug it sat in. It was quite a messy affair, and needed a lot of cleaning afterward. However, most families have nostalgic memories of this equipment.

Subsequently, we had juicers with handles attached to squeeze fruits without having to touch them directly with hands. You would have seen such kinds of hand juicers at outdoor events where they are used to make homemade kind of lemonade using lemon juice with fleshy part of lemon thrown in with lots of sugar and water. If ever you had a chance to drink this lemonade you would recall its having pips and the whole area around the point of making it quite messy.

The next improved version of hand juicers was the one that would sit on the table, standing vertical, and also had a handle. This design was introduced by Rival long ago in the 1920s. In this case the fleshy half of the fruit was placed onto the juicer part. But the handle offered a lot of power. Pulling of the handle caused squeezing action. This proved to be the beginning of the next range of hand juicers.

The technology of extracting juices from vegetables and fruit has undergone many changes and developments. However, it has been difficult to design an appropriate hand juicer that could facilitate juicing of leafy vegetables and the more solid crunchy fruits like apples. Some models are provided with a handle enabling you to crush these more inflexible foods and extract juice.

There is a segment of people who also like to preserve the flesh and seeds of the fruit along with the juice. For such people special filters were made to trap the squeezed fruit and all its parts. Another popular model was the reamer. In this case the action of spinning and rotation squeezed the fruit inside the container and delivered juice.