It’s hard to believe that there are only three more days left in this month after today. Sunday will be the first of June. In my corner of the world it has been such crazy weather that we haven’t noticed that Spring has even started, let alone being almost over. The weather experts are saying that the temperature will be back down in the 40′s tonight. Like I said, crazy.
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One of the items on yesterday’s “On This Day…” feature along the right sidebar was the note that in 1919 Charles Strite patented the first automatic toaster. Strange person that I am, I got to thinking about that. Here is one of the handiest kitchen appliances that has been invented, then refined over the years, and yet we take it for granted.
Toasting bread was originally used as a method for prolonging the life of bread, dating back to the time of the Roman Empire. The Latin word “tostum” means scorched, or burned. Until the use of electricity became commonplace, people would lay bread slices against a rack near the fire and turn it when one side was done.
But Charlie was really doing civilization a big favor. He saw the need and worked at meeting it. More precisely, the need was to cut back on the labor required to make toast. Strite’s machine was developed for the restaurant trade so that they wouldn’t have to pay someone to stand at the range and just toast slices of bread. Now they could drop the “toaster” off the payroll and assign someone else to push the lever down on their way to do something else. Cutting back on the payroll has been going on for a long time.
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A home model of the automatic pop-up toaster didn’t arrive until 1926 when the Waters-Genter Co. began selling the Toastmaster A-1-A model. And home economy took another leap forward. Ten years later in 1936 Toastmaster incorporated a pneumatic shock absorber into the bread carriage to make a “smoother, quieter” toasting operation.
This is no doubt more than you ever wanted to know about toasters and I can see you shuffling your feet around waiting for the nutty captain to finish up. So I’ll leave you with this link to the Toaster Museum Foundation where you can even buy a slick calendar with pictures of vintage toasters on each page.
Alright, let’s get the equipment checked out. I’ll go start the coffee pot and make some toast.
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