Why is the 1949 toaster still the 'best toaster'?



There are many toasters with the concept of 'baking bread deliciously', and their functions are evolving year by year, but there is a voice that 'vertical toaster released in 1949' is the highest peak of toasters.

Technical writer Sean Hollister explains why a toaster called ' Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster' is so good.

Why a toaster from 1949 is still smarter than any sold today --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-toaster-t20-t35-vista

The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours-YouTube


The Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, invented by Sunbeam engineer Ludvik J. Koci in 1948, has no buttons or levers and 'puts bread in the slot to automatically complete a perfect toast. 'something like. It looks like the following, it is a metallic vertical toaster.



Seen from above, it looks like this. A shape that puts one piece of bread in each of the two slots.



The bread sinks to the back of the slot ...



When the toast is complete, the bread will slowly rise instead of jumping up.



The feature of this toaster is that the toaster automatically recognizes the optimum baking time and completes the toast without the need for a person to set the baking time. This is because the mechanical thermostat mounted inside the toaster detects the baking and automatically stops heating.

Specifically, inside the toaster, a bimetal that 'bonds two alloy thin plates with different coefficients of thermal expansion and bends the metal according to the difference in elongation of each alloy' is installed, and it bends due to heat dissipation from the toaster. The mechanism that the metal plate is designed to turn off the switch. Another unique point is that when the heating wire cools and contracts, a mechanical chain reaction occurs in which the bread is lifted up. Maintenance is easy because it is a very simple mechanism, and even if the toaster does not work well, it seems that it will work again without problems just by adjusting the tension of the wire.



It is said that toast can be made regardless of whether the bread is at room temperature, refrigerated or frozen. Furthermore, if you want to make the grilled texture stronger, just cool the popped bread a little and then push it into the slot again. The general method of 'adding baking time' may inadvertently burn the bread, but in the case of Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, it seems that the bread will not turn black thanks to the thermostat mentioned above. ..

Disadvantages include not being able to know the time to bake in advance, bread with a hole in the center such as bagels cannot be baked because the thermostat does not work well, and thick bread does not fit in the slot. ..

The Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster is no longer available for sale, so if you want to buy it, look for a vintage on eBay. Hollister, who actually purchased and used a vintage Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, reported that the perfect toast with 'crispy outside and moist and fluffy inside' was completed. Hollister also owns a 'Panasonic Compact Oven ', but the baking is completely different from the Sunbeam toaster. Also, while saying that he has never used the high-class toaster 'Balmuda Steam Oven Toaster ' that 'adds steam to keep the moisture inside the bread and finishes the surface golden', 'using a vertical toaster for a short time' Isn't it more elegant as a solution to bake the outside crispy? '

At that time, the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster was sold for about $ 22.50 (value of $ 260 / about 30,000 yen in 2021), but at the time of writing the article, it can be purchased on eBay for an average of $ 130 (about 15,000 yen). ... apparently ...

in Hardware,   Video, Posted by darkhorse_log