The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch

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The process of human flight followed a similar path. We typically credit Orville and Wilbur Wright as the inventors of modern flight. However, we seldom discuss the aviation pioneers who preceded them like Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Langley, and Octave Chanute. The Wright brothers learned from and built upon the work of these people during their quest to create the world’s first flying machine. When it came time to create the plastic case for his toaster, Thwaites realized he would need crude oil to make the plastic. This time, he called up BP and asked if they would fly him out to an oil rig and lend him some oil for the project. They immediately refused. It seems oil companies aren’t nearly as generous as iron mines. Thomas Thwaites is a British designer and writer. He describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc." [1] The Toaster Project takes the reader on Thwaites s journey from dismantling the cheapest toaster he can find in London to researching how to smelt metal in a fifteenth-century treatise. His incisive restrictions all parts of the toaster must be made from scratch and Thwaites had to make the toaster himself made his task difficult, but not impossible. It took nine months and cost 250 times more than the toaster he bought at the store. In the end, Thwaites reveals the true ingredients in the products we use every day. Most interesting is not the final creation but the lesson learned. This book chronicles the Master's project of a British design student to make a toaster "from scratch". By from scratch he means that he wishes to take each component from its natural state to whatever form it needs to be in to be in a toaster. He starts off well enough by disassembling a cheap toaster. He then proceeds to jump in the deep end. He warned off by many well intentioned experts but pursues his dream.

My high school chemistry teacher once asked us the question if all human knowledge was lost, could we build a TV tomorrow. I thought it was very interesting on the premise that human knowledge is increment and that it can and has been lost before. I thought about it a bit, namely, the complex electronics and decided that no, I couldn't build a TV from scratch. He decided to create the steel components first. After discovering that iron ore was required to make steel, Thwaites called up an iron mine in his region and asked if they would let him use some for the project. At the end of the book the writer has something that very loosely resembles a toaster - it sort of looks like a toaster but we don't even get to learn if it works or not(!) - as the author says he did not attempt to switch it on in the interest of health and safety. What?!!! Did you actually have me read the whole book wondering if you'll manage to make a working toaster only to tell me that you're not even trying to use the finished product?! Sorry but that's a very serious shortcoming in my view. British designer Thwaites in 2011 at Poptech in Maine Toaster and casing from "The Toaster Project", on display in the V&A in September 2022 We‘ve all externalited most of reality in our hyperconnected, modern world. Not just Toasters, but all kinds of products seem to appear like from nowhere. We have turned our socieites into a global „cargo cult“ awaiting gadgets, gifts, and food to almost rain from the sky. The true cost (not just financially, but also socially, environmentally, and in terms of human and animal suffering) is invisible to us.Thwaites said he values his handmade toaster and that he'll never throw it away. "Maybe when we're in school each of us should assemble our own toaster, our own kettle, our own little microwave or something, then perhaps we'd be more likely to keep these things for longer, and repair and look after them. This would mean these products would be more than things that just come 'from the shops.'" He then embarked on a quest to build his toaster from scratch. The first hurdle Thomas had to face was get the raw materials, so he could build the toaster. He thought about how he was going to get these raw materials, and he realised just how complicated making a toaster really is. To attempt to make a toaster from scratch is a totally bonkers project and the result is much more expensive, far less functional and superficially way uglier than commercially available ones," Fairs adds. "But there is a weird kind of beauty to the end result that is both disturbing and compelling." The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites At first when I saw the title of the book and what it was about I thought it was a dream come true. As an engineer I've always wondered how far I could get if I were to try making something from scratch in an "end of days" scenario and this book is about somebody who actually attempted to do just that - Great!

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I would recommend “The Toaster Project” to anybody that appreciates looking at things in a different perspective. I say this, because this book is very thought provoking, in the way that it takes technology we are all familiar with, takes it, and turns it into something that is completely unfamiliar to us. Thomas Thwaites’s main point of view throughout the story is how reliant we are on other people, to the point that we don’t know how to use relatively simple technology. “My attempt to make a toaster has shown me just how reliant we all are on everyone else in the world… It also has brought into sharp focus the amount of history, struggle, thought, energy, and material that go into even something as mundane as an electric toaster.” (Thwaites 176). This quote from the story makes me think about how complex our society really is. It made me think about how I don’t have any clue about how simple technology works. Then I took this one step further. Products like computers are so complex, I wouldn’t even know where to start if somebody asked me how one works. Throughout the story, Thomas Thwaites makes The essential premise behind Thomas Thwaites' The Toaster Project is that in this modern world of ours, we take a lot for granted. Like toasters, for instance.