My colleague Tom once introduced you to a modern toaster with two seemingly ingenious buttons: one to briefly lift your bread to check its progress, and another to toast it “a bit more.” I respectfully submit you shouldn’t need a button at all.
That’s because in 1948, Sunbeam engineer Ludvik J. Koci invented the perfect toaster, one where the simple act of placing a slice into one of its two slots would result in a delicious piece of toasted bread. No button, no lever, no other input required. Drop bread, get toast.
Some of you are no doubt already connoisseurs who know what I’m referring to: the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, sold from 1949 all the way through the late ‘80s. (It goes by many names, including the T-20A, T-20-B, T20-C, T-35, VT-40, AT-W and even the 20-30-AG.) In 2019, the YouTube channel Technology Connections famously explained precisely why the antique Sunbeam Radiant is better than yours, and it might be the smartest thing you watch today.
But if you don’t have the time just now, I’ll summarize: When you stick a piece of bread into this toaster, it pushes down a series of cleverly designed levers that have just enough tension to lower and raise two slices all by themselves — 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.
We had one like it growing up. From what I remember it worked well.
The one before it had an adjustment knob for how forcefully it brought the toast back up once it was finished. If you set it tight enough you could eject the toast across the room.
The old one was more fun.
-------------------------------- Life is short. Play with your dog.
