The Toaster

2 Pages 496 Words

Toasters are part of most people’s everyday breakfast; you plug it in, pop the bread in, push the lever down and you’re away. But there’s more to toasters than just making good toast. In this report I’ll take you through the inside story of the toaster, how it works, history and the technology required.

Crompton and Co. invented the first electric toaster in 1893, though it first appeared in 1909. It was a manual toaster made possible by electricity. Manual meaning it toasted one side at a time and when it was done as desired, you pulled the plug. It wasn’t until 1919 that the first automatic electric toaster was invented by Charles Strite.

Today’s modernized toaster is much simpler for the person to use, yet much more complicated for the device itself. It was created using the technology of current-resisting elements from electric irons and heaters. The toaster works by converting electrical energy into heat energy. To do this, the current flows directly from the power point, through the contacts to most often, the nichrome wires. Different metals react differently to the flow of current. Nichrome wires are seen to be the best as they have a fairly high electrical resistance, meaning even a short length of it has enough resistance to get quite hot. Also nichrome alloy doesn’t rust at high temperatures seen in the toaster.

The conversion from electrical energy to heat energy happens by infrared radiation. Electrons moving from atom to atom along the nichrome wire cause a vibration. As this vibration of metal atoms increases, the wire gets hotter radiating heat from the element. Now this is the process of the manual toaster.

Today’s toaster, for your convenience, also consists of a spring-loaded tray and a timer. These follow basically the same process but a circuit had been added. This circuit acts as a timer and is made up of transistors (for its switching behaviour-A small current can turn a larger current ...