The Toaster

 

  There's a great video on the internet called "How I Built a Toaster From Scratch". A genial Englishman named Tom Thwaites is inspired by the novel, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, to attempt to make a toaster from scratch. He was a design student and the project was meant to show us how the appliances we take for granted rely on sophisticated global supply chains.

  He plans to reverse engineer a toaster to see if he could make one from scratch. He buys a cheap toaster and on taking it apart is bemused to find that it's made of over 400 separate pieces which in turn are made from more than a hundred different materials. 

 He travels around England to old mines to get ore to make the metal parts of his toaster. He makes plastic from potato starch and molds it into a very rough looking case. He’s unable to come up with insulation so when he plugs his toaster in it melts. The slice of bread is warm but not toasted. 

  The experiment proved that it takes a village to make a toaster. I wondered if I could make a toaster using elements found in a hardware store.  People have been making iron for thousands of years so the case and the frame for the coils would be the easy. Making heating coils that could get red hot over and over without falling apart would be tricky. It wasn't until 1909 that someone invented nickel-cadmium and spun it into wire. The bi-metal strips that automatically turn the coils off and pop the toast up didn't come along for another ten years.

  Is a toaster really necessary? Bread was toasted over a fire back in ancient days to preserve it. Bread can get moldy quickly, but you don't often see moldy toast. Early toasters were a simple rack or fork held over a fire. I used to make gas toast just for fun when I was a kid. It had a subtle gassy taste I enjoyed, plus it felt like camping.

  The electric toaster only became possible after Edison and Tesla developed ways to generate and distribute electricity to homes in the late nineteenth century. At first electricity was just used for lightbulbs, but the toaster came along soon after. Initially, only restaurants could afford toasters. Also, electricity was only available at night. Who needed lightbulbs in the daytime? But people wanted their toast for breakfast. Once electricity became a necessity, everyone wanted a toaster.

  You can get a Chinese toaster at Walmart for ten dollars. It has six shade settings and a removable crumb tray. For something fancier, Best Buy has a four slot toaster for $479.95. The Wolf Gourmet is made right here in the USA. It also has a crumb tray and an infinite number of gradations of darkness. According to the reviews, it lasts longer than the Walmart model.

  The toaster  made in England only lasted five seconds and cost over a thousand dollars to make. Thwaites's toaster is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. There's a book about the project, but first watch the video. Just Google: "toaster made from scratch".

 Toast indeed