I find this a bit bizarre. I've only taken a few toasters apart in the 90s, but they were examples of fairly complex control systems then. They didn't use timers or thermometers directly, but instead modeled the "toast" as a physical thermal element that was heated by the coil current, isolated on long wires, and cooled by ambient temperature (like little analog computer). You'll notice that the second time you toast is faster than the first, because the toaster/elements are already hot. Those thermo-mechanical elements were cheaper and more reliable than some digital IC in the 90s.
Likely current super modern $200 toasters use timers and thermometers along with numerical models (some use cameras) to brown your toast, but I don't think they're dumb. The power put into the element (the voltage, current, resistance) can be measured at 2 points, along with air temperature in the toaster or even radiant heat sensors for the toast surface and can all be combined into a Kalman or StateSpace estimator for the toast surface temp and radiant power cooking it.
I don't know that the toast is that much better (for the price) now and they just have different failure modes. I love the old toaster technology (especially the auto rising toast!), but they're far from perfect and were quite expensive in their own time. Be really careful when cleaning them!
p.s. the video is the only interesting part of the article.
makes me wonder if 'commercial grade' nowadays also features a repair contract where shit constantly breaks like the micky-d's ice cream machines...
i would be interested if you have more url's for commercial/restaurant grade products though (quite frankly im irked at buying a toaster that is an absolute piece of trash, among other things like amazon's-cheapness-trend ect ect)
People get irrational over this kind of products where all control of the outcome has been ceded to the product designer. I don't. To me, this is the kind of product that disrespects the user by not even giving the user any (literally) knobs and controls to customize things. Especially on something as personal as food.
I'm at least glad that the author describes the failings of the toaster and says it only works "most of the time".
Yeah I read the whole article waiting for the eventual gotcha but it never came. The toaster cost $260 (inflation adjusted). You can't control how much you want to toast the bread. It only works for specific bread types. There is no indicator for when the bread is ready. It only works "most of the time". It is much more likely to burn down your house.
What exactly makes it smarter and better than my modern $25 one other than the standard "everything was better back in the day" nostalgia?
You can control how dark you want your toast. There is a knob under the handle.
It works for all bread types that fit in the toaster. I should know, I bake my own bread (and it's not all sandwich bread loaves).
It is not more likely to burn down your house. Take responsibility for your own well-being and just add a 3 prong cord (and ground it to the outer shell, there's even a screw hole for it).
I have one of these toasters and I love it. It's my favorite kitchen appliance
This exception is actually an example of how everything was better "back in the day". This toaster, which has had its controls removed, is analagous to, for example:
- a personal computer which can only browse the web, or run verified software.
- a coffee mug that keeps your coffee warm, but requires you to install an app in order to set a temperature
- any gaming console (technically the first category)
- cars which have had their buttons removed
- A tv and a roku, that have been glued together for some reason
It is an elegant design to to achieve a goal with simpler and fewer parts.
A uC and a dozen sensors and actuators and MB of code is a brute force solution. It's flexible and functional but not elegant. Instead of figuring out some way for a thing to happen by itself, you explicitly write a bunch of code to spell it all out.
Now the uC way is more flexible. You can change the code to change what happens, but that's a separate metric and a separate value. Not all tasks or products actually benefit from it, and it comes at the cost of complexity and reliability and longevity and dependence on infrastructure and supply chain. Personally, I think it's completely and utterly ridiculous that a toaster requires a chip fab.
I know why it's not really that crazy if chip fabs happen to exist anyway for other reasons but the observation of the absurdity does still stand.
This is false. Nothing happened "by itself". This thing as explained by the author of the article requires "a series of cleverly designed levers" and "a mechanical thermostat" and "a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire".
This kind of mechanical engineering is really no different from software engineering. You design a series of mechanisms to make things happen, whether through levers and screws and bimetal strips or code. With code, frankly less effort is needed for such design. And yes there could be elegance in code that is not directly apparent to the consumer, much like there is elegance here.
I'm not disputing elegance. I'm decrying the lack of functionality and lack of control by the user.
Many aspects of the things operation happen by itself. They cut a piece of metal to a particular shape, but the properties and behavior of that metal already existed and were not designed by anyone, merely disscovered and utilized.
It's somewhat like the difference between a mechanical interlock and a program with rules that do the same thing.
You could have two solenoids operating two relays, and two extra contacts on each relay to act as sensors, and some code that says if A is on then turn B off, if B is on then turn A off. (pretend for the moment that a single relay can't be both sides at the same time)
Or you could have no solenoids and no sensors and no computer, just a solid bar connecting the two switches with a pivot in the middle. It becomes impossible to press both switches at once, and the function, the enforcing of the desired truth table rule, very much happens "by itself".
The fact that a person designed and fashioned the mechanical interlock does not make the two systems equal, in kind not just in degree.
Some customization controls, such as the darkness of the bread, are valuable to me because I like slightly darker toast than my partner. (As others have pointed out, note that this product does have a knob for that.)
But all options have a cost so those I do not use have negative value.
My current toaster oven has three dials and an LCD display with a hierarchical menu, the vast majority of which I have never intentionally used, though I don't mind all the bells and whistles because I have learned how to ignore them. But for toasting slices of bread my current toaster is less useful than one in the article despite the proliferation of options because it requires that I mentally estimate the amount of time to toast depending on the bread slice's thickness, composition, and current temperature (i.e. from counter, fridge, or freezer) so I can specify an appropriate amount of time to toast. Occasionally I slightly over- or under-toast something and then deal with correcting that.
I agree that it is much more infuriating when controls I depend on are removed or shunted off into a car touchscreen menu or appliance-specific mobile app. But for the vast majority of appliances and applications I just want the thing to do the job I hired it to do with minimal questions or interruptions.
Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress. Manufacturers build in parental controls and then the customers become children who you can get to do chores for you in order to unlock the right to use them. This business model should be illegal, and barring that it should at least be unpalatable to consumers, but we can't even have that for some reason.
> Imagine removing the number keys from your phone and calling it progress.
But that's what the iPhone did, didn't it? Before that most phones (even touch-screen ones) had physical number keys, whereas the iPhone demoted the keypad/dialpad off to a secondary screen in the Phone application. For a while the only time I ever used the keypad when navigating an automated menu, but now that Android has "Direct My Call" I don't even use it for that.
I'm glad that there are still phones with number keys for people who like them, but I'm equally glad it's not illegal to make products simpler for those who prefer that.
I'm afraid you just don't understand the structure of my comment. It's not a hypothetical fear. It's an analogy for removing functionality under the guise of curation or security.
I wish people would stop talking about this sort of thing. It is driving the price up! It is truly impressive to have toast knowing that everything is being handled mechanically.
> and it’s got a mechanical thermostat inside that stops your bread toasting when it’s toasted and ready, NOT after some arbitrary amount of time
What exactly does "toasted and ready" mean? Modern toasters have timers and "a bit more" buttons because people have different preferences. That isn't a design flaw.
It's explained in the video but, if I remember correctly, there's a sensor that detects the temperature of the surface of the bread and it's that surface temperature that determines whether the bread is done (which is adjustable for the different preferences). It might have been a moisture sensor or an infrared sensor though? I don't really remember. Either way, the distinction is that it's reading properties of your toast to determine done-ness, rather than responding to a timer event.
My point is that there is no absolute "doneness" for bread no matter how much tech you shove in. I usually want my slice lightly browned. Some days I want it medium. With some spreads/kinds of eggs I want a more charred coating. A modern $10 toaster with a simple timer can achieve any of that while this genius $250 one cannot.
And my point is that the subjective "doneness" of bread does still exist, even if an absolute one doesn't. And that subjective "doneness" is achieved using simple and repairable mechanical parts, rather than black-box electronics that need to be replaced if they have failures, and work on functions of related metrics, rather than on direct metrics of the subject, itself.
If you want to use a $10 toaster, more power to you! If you want to imply that this toaster can't possibly measure and achieve "doneness" of toast, I disagree. It does so in a subjective way, based on a variable input controlled by the subjective preferences of the user, but what it measures is how closely to that subjective "doneness" it is. Nothing impractical or dishonest about that description at all.
It's very hard to see from that listing's photos, but there is a darkness knob just underneath the black handles, itself also colored black. When you look at the device from underneath, it's pretty obvious to see it, but it's not visible in any of the photos from that specific listing.
Toasters are a waste of counter space. Just toast your bread under the broiler of your oven. Sure, you have to flip the bread, but you can do a whole bunch at one time if you're making lots of toast.
You might think "Gee, that's a waste of electricity" using an entire oven to make toast. Where I live, electricity is under $0.15/kwh. It takes about 3 minutes to toast bread on both sides. That works out to about $0.0105 to make toast. If a toaster costs $20, it would take me about 1904 uses of the toaster to pay for itself, not including the electricity the toaster uses. And that's assuming I'm only make the number of slices the toaster can handle (say, 2 or 4?) and not more in the oven.
In my case the primary benefit of a toaster is that it requires minimal intervention, not energy efficiency.
When I'm trying to get multiple small humans dressed and fed in the morning I prefer to put all the slices in a toaster oven and set the automatic timer. If I used the oven broiler I would have to manually set timers to remind me to run back to the kitchen and flip the bread. And of course if I forget or can't make it back to the kitchen in time then it doesn't take many burnt-on-one-side pieces of toast to equal the cost of a toaster.
I agree that there are niche kitchen gadgets that are not worth the space but it depends on the person. For example, I do not have a dedicated coffee machine, but many people consider theirs indispensable.
I respect that you would be willing to sacrifice three minutes of sleep for toast without a toaster. However, I am working to increase my sleep back to a healthy amount including physical therapy, setting better boundaries at work, and outsourcing a lot of low-value "just a few minutes" kinds of tasks that are individually small but cumulatively add up.
If I can spend $50 and half a square foot of counter space to get an extra 3 minutes of sleep every day I would do that in a heartbeat. If I could pay $1,000 and ten square feet of counter space to get an extra hour a day I'd do that in a heartbeat too.
Our differing life circumstances make our tradeoffs different, though I will admit that I aspire to become time-rich enough someday to afford luxuries like spending three minutes a day making toast without a toaster.
I have a dualit toaster still made in UK and high quality, easy to replace components and manual lever but it was pricey and def not as advanced as this old toaster but analog is best to control how you want your bread
The timer is fully mechanical, it doesn’t pop up automatically at all. The lever is fully mechanical and you use it to push up the bread, there is no spring mechanism
Mentioned in the video, but worth repeating. This one like many old appliances is ungrounded. What's wrong in this video is the suggestion to rely on neutral for ground. Neutral is not ground and shouldn't be relied on for electrical exposure safety. Not mentioned is the condition of the interior steel's plating. The galvanizing (at least zinc) and chrome are separating from the base metal in areas through oxidization and abrasion.
The design risks have value and are worth preserving, but "this device predates safety" is a real factor to bear in mind.
Mitsubishi makes a really incredible toaster for Japanese markets called TO-ST1-T (colloquially known as “The Toasty”). It only toasts a single piece of bread but it is adjustable for bread thickness and doneness, and is incredibly consistent in making a very thin and uniform layer of toasted bread with the inside remaining fluffy and moist. I can’t go back to making toast in a normal machine.
If you decide to splurge on this toaster be aware that you also need a step down power transformer for USA that outputs 100V (domestic Japan power supply).
This toaster is awesome but it really doesn’t fit anything but thin sliced bread. Modern toasters accommodate bagels (yes good bagels should not be toasted) English muffins, and so on. I really wanted one of these about a year ago but after seeing the slot size, decided to just get a new one each time my old one can’t be fixed.
I don't have a Sunbeam toaster, but I do have a Sunbeam CG-1 waffle iron, which I use routinely. I have an even older W-2, but it no longer works right. Sunbeam was once the king of the home appliance business.
> The Sunbeam T-20 reportedly retailed for over $22.50 brand new back in 1949. That’s $260 in today’s money
When people talk about appliances today being built with deliberate "planned obsolescence" (ie, designed to fail within 2 years so you have to buy another one), I like to point the above out.
I don't think modern cheap design is a deliberately malicious move being done to make more money. I think it's a consequence of consumers being short-sighted and VERY price-sensitive. Most consumers, when they go to Walmart to buy, say, a blender, might see the $19 Mainstays (Walmart's own brand), $30 Hamilton Beach, and $100 Ninja, and will opt for the Mainstays that will die in a year of moderate use, rather than the HB that will last 3-5 years.
But back to my original point, because of price sensitivity of consumers, capitalist competition creates a race to the bottom on prices, and quality suffers as a result. I don't think it's part of a sinister plan to make you buy a new one every year. And for the people that are willing to pay for the higher quality, good brands still exist. For your blender, that's probably going to be Vitamix or Blendtec.
You can certainly pay $250 for a toaster nowadays, but all you'll get for your additional money is a higher quality casing and maybe a microcontroller and LCD all surrounding the same toaster guts. Similarly, you can pay $500 for a Kitchenaid mixer instead of $100 for a Walmart mixer, but both will have plastic gears that break in a few years.
The issue is that there's many categories of products where high-quality, long-lasting options simply no longer exist, and where the amount of money you pay has no impact on its quality or longevity. In fact, paying more gets you more bells and whistles that can fail.
All plastic part should be replaceable, and you should be able to either buy them from the constructor, or have the plans available once you can't.
At least in Europe, probably before 2030. That was in the Boost4.0 consortium document I had to read around 2019. I don't know if the law is pending or in application yet, but EU manufacturing sector know it's coming.
> but both will have plastic gears that break in a few years.
Someone in another comment said that the KitchenAid comes with a plastic gear so that if the motor is overloaded, the gear breaks rather than letting the high-power and expensive motor burn out.
Subscriptions gets a lot of hate, including on HN, partly for good reasons, but it has the bonus points that the companies' incentive is to make their products last longer. That's especially true for dumb devices that won't give any new feature to users with every year new model.
I see signs that we're kinda sorta getting there, in France we have for instance Darty Max subscription which for a fixed price (starting at 12€/month) will come to your house and fix your appliance. But I feel like it's way too slow coming, and they don't have backward feedback (yet?) to tell which OEMs are doing well, which are doing shit.
It's smarter in the sense that it's a more elegant design that produces a result from fewer and simpler parts, not because it has a bigger brain than one with a computer in it.
The fewer & simpler parts isn't just a win for the manufacturer although all manufacturers are always striving for that.
A dumb piece of wire if it does the job, is far smarter and more valuable to the end user than something unnecessarily complex and delicate that will die from something as silly as static or a leaking cap or a fall or a spill or a hot day.
Companies produce new products with computers in them not because it's needed or better, but simply because it sells. In a capitalist environment, they must always be making something new and appealing, and it really doesn't matter what defines "new" or "appealing" at any given time.
I had a feeling this was going to be a Technology Connections video before clicking and was happy to see that was the case. Great channel and a wonderful archive of stuff on there.
Also a bunch of other videos by the same guy are very interesting... mostly dealing with old tech, but sometimes even some new things (like fridges, car lights, etc.)
I've been watching his videos on a 1970s pinball machine. It goes horribly in-depth (in a good way). Fascinating how much complexity could be managed with the simplest of interfaces.
Strange, I thought the article had a very thorough explanation of the mechanism: levers activated by the weight of the bread and a bimetal mechanical thermostat
But linking directly to the video would mean less traffic to the verge and make it easier for viewers to subscribe to the video creator on youtube (who has a lot of other interesting videos, about fridges and cameras and photography, video, etc... ). Why would the verge want that? :)
I was satisfied with reader mode sans video. We need more elegant and reliable designs like this. A new toaster today might demand that I install an app on Android or iOS.
2024 will be the year when someone will make an “ai” toaster. Potentially someone will claim we risk being annihilated by it. Wouldnt be surprised if someone defended its rights.
Add to the list: Kirby vacuums, Craftsman tools, Kitchenaid mixers. Still using my grandparent's heirlooms from the 60s/70s for all of those.
All strictly better than anything you can buy for any price today. So many things have improved since then, but basic consumer goods have almost entirely degraded to worthless crap.
How are modern Kitchenaid stand mixers worse today than before? I've taken a somewhat recent (<10yr old) mixer apart to clean and re-grease it, and it didn't seem meaningfully different from a 30+yr old one I helped a friend restore.
Depends somewhat on the model and when it was manufactured. After Whirlpool bought Kitchenaid from Hobart, they built a new plant to manufacture them in, though with Hobart's original tooling. Later, they introduced new models that substituted some plastic parts, and they had horrible QA problems. KA made some effort to fix these things, but their reputation took a big hit.
There was a period of time in the middle there where they switched to non-metal gear thingy in there which would occasionally strip out and break with improper use. That was evidently intentional, to save the motor from breaking, but it does wear out faster.
You can still get metal gear ones, but they're a little pricier.
it only really wears out if you are running the machine beyond what it’s supposed to, if you do this with a metal gear you will break the motor instead of the gear.
Because of this there are lots of units “for parts” on eBay and will often even mention that it just needs a new worm gear. This is an easy fix and how I got KitchenAid in my kitchen for under $150
I wish someone would figure out how to Frankenstein the controls for a 1984 era TV set onto a modern TV.
My parents are basically unable to use their TV without writing down lengthy instructions on how to switch from cable to Netflix to live local news using 2 controllers, and I still get tech support calls nearly every week owing to Wifi issues, someone accidentally activating an obscure accessibility setting, or other random issues.
I noticed that once I stopped responding to my parents questions about how to do all the switching, as soon as there was something important, they figured it out on their own.
This is nonsense. Those tools and mixers and vacuums from the 60s and 70s cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars today. A 1950s kirby vacuum adjusted for inflation was $1800USD in todays dollars.
Are you really claiming that an $1800 vacuum today is worse than an $200 vacuum from 1956, or that a $200 vacuum today is worse than a $200 vacuum from 1956? Because the latter is dishonest and untrue.
Similarly, the first kitchenaid mixer H-5 was introduced in 1919 and cost $189, which is about $3,500 today.
The reality is that people want to spend a tiny fraction of what their grandparents did and think they can still receive the same quality.
Try spending 10% of your yearly income on a vacuum or a mixer and see how long it lasts. The only difference is that your grandparents didn't have the option to spend 20X less on a cheap version.
I don't believe kitchenaid mixers were $20 "shortly after release" and I can't find any information around that. If you have sources, I'd love to see them, otherwise I do not believe that.
For vacuums, any quality vacuum will claim it will last for 20 years. When I bought my entry level Miele for 1/10 the price of what my grandparents paid for their vacuum, they proudly promoted that the motor in it would last over 20 years.
The thing about a 30 year old vacuum is that it likely went to a repair shop (or was self-repaired) a half dozen times over that 30 years and became a "Vacuum of Theseus" where very few components may truly have been original. You can still do this today with any medium or high end vacuum. You don't have to buy a $150 Shark Crap, you can buy a quality repairable brand and keep it 20+ years, and you'll pay 1/10 or 1/5 what your grandparents paid. You don't have to buy a $2000 vacuum like they did.
My Miele is 5 years old and has needed zero repair and still operates fantastically with basically no wear. While I doubt the entire thing will make it to 20, Miele continues to sell the design and parts and I don't doubt I can repair it in 5 or 10 years when the first part breaks.
Likely current super modern $200 toasters use timers and thermometers along with numerical models (some use cameras) to brown your toast, but I don't think they're dumb. The power put into the element (the voltage, current, resistance) can be measured at 2 points, along with air temperature in the toaster or even radiant heat sensors for the toast surface and can all be combined into a Kalman or StateSpace estimator for the toast surface temp and radiant power cooking it.
I don't know that the toast is that much better (for the price) now and they just have different failure modes. I love the old toaster technology (especially the auto rising toast!), but they're far from perfect and were quite expensive in their own time. Be really careful when cleaning them!
p.s. the video is the only interesting part of the article.