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Toaster

technology Maturity 7-9 Next article →

A toaster is a small electric tool used to cook sliced bread. It uses radiant heat to turn soft bread into crunchy toast. This change happens because of the Maillard reaction, which browns the bread. Most toasters have slots where you place the bread. Inside these slots are heating elements made of nichrome wire. This special metal wire can get very hot without breaking.

Hot Dog Toaster
Hot Dog Toaster

Many people use a pop-up toaster at home. You drop a slice into a slot and press a lever. This action lowers the bread and turns on the heat. You can often choose how dark the toast gets using a knob or buttons. A timer or a thermal sensor tells the machine when to stop. A bimetallic strip is a type of sensor that feels the heat. When the cycle ends, the toast pops up out of the slots.

Before electricity, people toasted bread over open fires. In the 16th century, people used long-handled forks to hold bread near a fire. Some of these forks had special parts to rest on a grate. In the 1700s, different types of metal toasters appeared in England and Scotland. Early electric toasters were not perfect because the wires broke easily. This changed in 1905 when an engineer named Albert Marsh created nichrome. This new metal alloy stayed strong even when it was red-hot.

Conveyor toaster
Conveyor toaster

Many important inventions helped make the modern toaster. In 1909, General Electric released the D-12, which was a successful electric toaster. Later, Charles Strite patented the automatic pop-up toaster in 1921. By 1925, the Toastmaster became the first household toaster to brown both sides at once. Some big machines called conveyor toasters are used in restaurants. These can toast between 250 and 1,800 slices of bread every single hour.

Black & Decker toaster oven
Black & Decker toaster oven

There are many different kinds of toasting machines today. A toaster oven is a small oven that can also bake or broil. These are great for small homes or campers because they heat food fast. You might even see a hot dog toaster that has special slots for sausages. Some very high-end toasters can even connect to the Internet. In the past, scientists even made toasters that could toast weather pictures onto bread.

Black & Decker toaster oven
Black & Decker toaster oven
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🖼️ Images & Media (4)
File:Black & Decker toaster oven.jpg
Black & Decker toaster oven.jpg
File:Conveyor toaster.jpg
Conveyor toaster.jpg
United States patent 1,394,450,...
File:Hot Dog Toaster.jpg
Hot Dog Toaster.jpg
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