The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours

The Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster predates both and seems worth mentioning here for it’s superior user experience and unique analog technology. Technology Connections produced a fantastic teardown video of it a while back. [VIDEO]

A related thought, just leaving this here. There's something great about old technology (though obviously one must be aware of survivorship bias when citing such technology), despite the fact that, logically speaking, new technology should have obviously been better. Perhaps it's some variant of Jevons' paradox. The better / more efficient things get, the more of an impetus there is to use them in truly crappy ways. And this is how I'm starting to feel about programming with vs without an AI: you can either program manually to create truly creative, functional, elegant stuff, or use AI to produce garbage more efficiently. There just doesn't seem to be an in-between category, at least in terms of demand. In case you haven't seen this video of a toaster from the 60s before, you're in for a treat: [VIDEO] I'm also reminded of Edsger Dijkstra's quote on elegance: [LINK]

But then how could you make toast when you're not home, like at a conference, or driving in your car? /s This is a pretty cool toaster: [VIDEO]

I’d technology connections did a 20 minute long episode on the mechanical design of this toaster. I’d recommend it if you haven’t see it. [VIDEO]

Since toast is discussed on HN: I remember this video [0] nicely explaining some nice engineering of an interesting toaster. [0]: [VIDEO]

The reason is that old toaster designs had unpolarized plugs and therefore a good chance of uninsulated live wires inside, even when off. Modern toasters don't anymore, but folk wisdom lasts forever. Although you make a good point that if your outlet polarity is reversed, you might still have a problem. I don't know if modern designs are robust to that... I learned this from a video about old Sunbeam toasters that was unexpectedly fascinating: [VIDEO]

YouTuber Technology Connections was featured in the recent discussion on diswashing machines and detergents. He's done a video on a lovely ancient toaster, too: [VIDEO] Fully automatic brownness selection, and hands-free insertion and pop-up -- all without any electronic chips at all.

[VIDEO] a interesting video on a similar subject, a antique mechanical toaster that works better than many modern ones