The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

As one whose elementary school education included tours of a Ford assembly line and the production floor of the Eastern Steel Barrel company in central New Jersey, I've been forever fascinated by what happens between the factory and the retail space. In visits to pre-industrial age museums, I wonder how pioneers or settlers of any age got by in a time and place when you couldn't just go buy a hammer, a screw, or a nail...you needed to have them forged for you. A few years ago, I got hooked on the How It's Made series for the same reasons.

In "The Toaster Project", Thomas Thwaites takes similar curiosity to the limit, as he tries to make --from scratch-- a most mundane piece of modern technology: an electric toaster (a device now into its second century of evolution).

In doing so, Thwaites first deconstructs a common household toaster with a plastic case (the cheapest one currently offered on Amazon (by Rival sells for around $12. He discovers a device containing somewhere between 157 to 404 separate "parts", depending on how you count and how far down you dissect the components. He broadly categorizes these as belonging to either "steel", "mica", "plastic", "copper" and "nickel" subsets and then sets about to fabricate a working one.

The result is an engaging and entertaining mixture of science, economics (especially the economies of scale and distance in the domain of mass production) and consumer technology. Even as Thwaites explores these areas, he never takes himself --or the project-- too seriously.

The end result is a toaster that wouldn't pass muster with even the least demanding of buyers...at more than 100 times the cost of the mass production version that he attempted to reproduce.

Along the way, Thwaites treats us to an amusing romp as he engages academic and industrial subject matter experts to explore the possibility of how to proceed within the constraints of own ground rules. He concludes with well-reasoned insights into the nature of consumption.

If you somehow have managed not to take modern consumer goods for granted: good for you, and you'll enjoy this book. If you aren't part of that group: read this book, and you'll be unlikely to take such things for granted in the future.

A great look at modern consumerism and its underlying technologies.

Thomas Thwaites' book, The Toaster Project, promises a lot and (nearly) delivers a toaster. The book is an interesting look at how complex even simple, every-day technological devices might be. Thwaites uses the pop up toaster as a springboard to discuss topics from metallurgy to the industrial revolution to our ecological footprint. In the end, the book is a short, quick, and mostly successful read.

A second year postgraduate design student at the Royal College of Art, Thwaites begins a nine month 1187.54 pound sterling quest to build a simple pop up toaster. He doggedly pursues this goal and documents his way through it for his masters project as well as his own personal obsession with the idea.

The book is similar to that genre of cheap but entertaining books where the author decides to document a particularly crazy quest. The master of this genre is, of course, A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible or The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World). The protagonist goes through the kooky committed motions, but amidst the tongue in cheek prose the author eventually discovers some hidden truths that make the ridiculous romp somehow worthwhile. The writing and the contrived epiphanies keep the reader interested and will thus keep these authors afloat even in the time of a recession.

Thwaites' book is not so different from this genre. His goal is to make a toaster, but refuses to use a kit. Instead, he sets up some rules to make sure that the quest is damn near impossible: he must make everything from scratch, he must obtain all products from overland travel (no airplanes or boats), and he insists on making a pop-up variety of toaster.

For the most part Thwaites delivers what he promises. He does cheat a bit on some of the rules, eventually obtaining plastic from post consumer waste, nickel from coins, and never quite delivered on the pop-up feature. Still, his foray into metallurgy, his traipsing about England to obtain raw materials, and his attempts to brew up a little plastic make for an interesting read.

Sometimes the book falls short. We get a thorough going over of how to obtain iron from ore and obtain mica from the mountains. However, he never completely describes the process by which he derived the copper. Nor does he adequately explain how he shaped the metal parts/wiring of the toaster or completed the final assembly.

Still, the whimsy of the idea carries over nicely to the whimsy of the prose. That and Thwaites' infectious enthusiasm keep the book from being dull. It helps that Thwaites has a good sense of humor and never takes himself too seriously regarding the project. It also helps that there are an abundant number of pictures in this book to illustrate Thwaites' trials and tribulations.

I received an uncorrected proof of the book, so all my pictures were in black and white. But according to the accompanying literature, the final edition of the book will have 98 color and 40 black and white images, which I am sure will be more compelling. Sadly, it looks as though the size format will not change--the book will remain 7.5 x 5.1 inches. My guess is that this book might have done better in a larger format, where it could sit on your coffee table and become more of a conversation piece.

In spite of the minor flaws, I found the book to be interesting from a historical and social perspective and really enjoyed Thwaites self-effacing, fresh, and humorous tone.

In The Toaster Project Thomas Thwaites documents his attempt to build a toaster from scratch. This entails a lot of work, money, and research that produces a compelling narrative about a modern device that usually receives little attention.

The project is impractical and "ridiculous," but the author tells the story well, and I feel like I got something out of reading it. I am not sure it was what he intended for me to take away from it, because I don't share his take on the issues he raises in it about our mass consumer culture. I also don't think the project actually provides much support for the agenda he is trying to advance, and he seems at times to be forcing his quirky endeavor to make arguments that it isn't designed to sustain. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable story. I'd also like to add that the photography is superb and the text is arranged beautifully; it's nice to see a book receive so much care and attention in its production.