The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch

Product Information

years later I'm staring at the dome of the Pantheon, the largest concrete dome in the world, and frescos of a spherical earth from ancient Rome. All knowledge, that was once lost or disputed: concrete construction and science. I realized it could be lost and that all knowledge is institutional and incremental. In case you were wondering, they didn’t give him what he wanted. He’d heard about making plastic out of potatoes, and so tried that. He made the mold himself, or course, by taking a fallen tree from across the street and carving it by hand.

We‘ve all externalited most of reality in our hyperconnected, modern world. Not just Toasters, but all kinds of products seem to appear like from nowhere. We have turned our socieites into a global „cargo cult“ awaiting gadgets, gifts, and food to almost rain from the sky. The true cost (not just financially, but also socially, environmentally, and in terms of human and animal suffering) is invisible to us. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether. Thomas Thwaites has travelled to mines across the country to get the raw materials for his toaster. Processing these raw materials at home (for example he smelted iron ore in a microwave), he has produced a 'kind of half-baked, handmade pastiche' of a toaster you can buy in Argos for less than five pounds.

Share

I have mixed feelings about this book. The concept of a man making a toaster completely from scratch is definitely interesting, and the author is quite entertaining in his writing. A design student at the Royal College of Art in London has made a toaster – literally from the ground up. Graham, Chris (28 May 2016). "No kidding: Why Thomas Thwaites lived as a goat in Switzerland". The Telegraph . Retrieved 15 January 2017. First impressions aren’t everything. The Toaster Project’s title, cover, and the toaster itself don’t showcase the stories true potential . The Toaster Project was definitely more than an attempt at making a homemade toaster. I would call this adventurous nonfiction a success. The Toaster Project is a wonderfully written story about Thomas Thwaites’s journey about making a toaster from scratch. The adventure takes place over a nine month period where Thomas follows a set of three rules on a death defying journey.

Three things that this book does well are as follows. Thomas uses lots of research and planning before starting his project and took good notes and evidence of this, for Instance he showed how he was planning on making a common household toaster, not something that just makes bread turn into toast. secondly, he shows how he creates the toaster very well, evidence in this is when he uses the furnace to smelt iron, he shows his struggle to create the furnace. lastly Thomas Talks to a lot of people that have experience and knowledge of what he's trying to do, a good example of this is when he is talking to a professor about creating plastic and the professor says it's nearly impossible. My high school chemistry teacher once asked us the question if all human knowledge was lost, could we build a TV tomorrow. I thought it was very interesting on the premise that human knowledge is increment and that it can and has been lost before. I thought about it a bit, namely, the complex electronics and decided that no, I couldn't build a TV from scratch. The last chapter has several thoughtful passages about the collision of industrialization and the environment: Thomas Thwaites". Industrial Design: Faculty. Rhode Island School of Design . Retrieved 14 March 2018. I would also recommend “The Toaster Project” to anybody that likes to build objects. This is because, “the Toaster Project” is a journey to building a toaster from scratch. “I dissect my patient into 157 separate parts, but these parts are made up of sub-parts, which are themselves made up of sub-parts.” (18). The author took an object, and he broke it down into many tiny parts. Throughout the book, it follows these different parts, and completely breaks down the process of how he got each part, and how he used it. People who like to build things know how much effort goes into simple projects, so they would read this book and relate with Thomas Thwaites on how complicated building and assembling is.The practical aspects of the project are rather a lot of fun. They also serve as a vehicle through which theoretical issues can be raised and investigated. Commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials happens on a scale that is difficult to resolve into the domestic toaster. Thirdly, I now know about the essay I, Pencil, written from the perspective of a pencil ‘as told to Leonard E. Read’, and I think it’s fantastic! We are mostly blind to the remarkable interconnectedness of things. This is important to understand because in a complex world it is hard to see which forces are working for you as well as which forces are working against you. Similar to buying a toaster, we tend to focus on the final product and fail to recognize the many processes leading up to it.

What you get is mainly a story of exploration and adventure into sourcing the basic raw materials to build a toaster, told from a design student's perspective. This means a lot of detail is missing or skipped, while at the same time the book contains lots of anecdotes, verbatim conversations, etc. At first when I saw the title of the book and what it was about I thought it was a dream come true. As an engineer I've always wondered how far I could get if I were to try making something from scratch in an "end of days" scenario and this book is about somebody who actually attempted to do just that - Great! Thwaites said he values his handmade toaster and that he'll never throw it away. "Maybe when we're in school each of us should assemble our own toaster, our own kettle, our own little microwave or something, then perhaps we'd be more likely to keep these things for longer, and repair and look after them. This would mean these products would be more than things that just come 'from the shops.'" News from Dezeen Events Guide, a listings guide covering the leading design-related events taking place around the world. Plus occasional updates. Dezeen Awards China Some experts believe the feathers of birds evolved from reptilian scales. Through the forces of evolution, scales gradually became small feathers, which were used for warmth and insulation at first. Eventually, these small fluffs developed into larger feathers capable of flight.Each consumer product should come with an (electronic) booklet specifying everything involved in producing it. Here is where smart home devices could come in, in informing and educating by gamifying this learning process for everyone on a regular basis, via offering in an entertaining format such as this project. Maybe this type of projects should be in school curriculum, much more effective in teaching and learning through investigative efforts. I read a lot. All non-fiction. Amongst the greatest books I have ever held in my hands, The Toaster Project obtained an outstanding position. It is not just a fun adventure, the author is taking us with. It is profound in its learnings. In the end, despite the rather somber last couple of chapters, I really enjoyed this, it’s a brilliant concept that I have thought about a lot over the years (not building a toaster, specifically, but about how hard it is to really make something from scratch), and loved to see it broken down the way this toaster problem was here.

I heard about your book on NPR this morning. At first blush its an interesting idea. Though carrying it further if you are bound and determined to make an electric toaster from scratch, would you not also have to generate electricity to power it?

Thank you!

If you’re wondering what the puddle of goo is lying on the floor beside me, it’s what’s left of my broken brain. Yes, this book mushed my head up like it was making Kool-Aid. The “Toaster Project”, by Thomas Thwaites, is a non-fiction story about the author, and his journey to learn more about where our technology comes from. When the book started, he had many questions about where technology comes from. He asked, “Where do the products that fill our lives come from?” Microwaves, as we all know, are just so much more convenient - and so I tried to replicate the industrial process outlined in the patent using a domestic microwave. After some not-so-careful experimentation which necessitated another microwave, followed by some careful experimentation, I got the timing and ingredients right and made a blob of iron about as big as a 10p coin.