Greetings and salutations!
Today I have a short update for you regarding the best toaster ever produced.
For those that are new around here, a little over a year ago I made a video
about the Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster,
a toaster so good that it is literally Automatic Beyond Belief!
That video touched briefly on what I’m going to talk about today,
but its focus was mainly on the mechanism that allows the bread to effortlessly fall into
the toaster and slowly come back up with non-startling, near-silent action,
and without any input from the user.
Literally all you do is put the bread in the slot, and it does the rest.
If you haven’t seen that video and are interested in knowing what makes the bread go down and up
I’d suggest you watch it first through that card I’ve provided.
Fun Fact!™
If someone puts a card in a video, and you -
Shoot! Missed it!
Fear not!
That little information icon up there will hold all of the cards that a creator has put in a video!
Just hover over with your mouse on desktop,
or touch in the middle of the video somewhere on your phone and it’ll be there in the top right.
Just thought I’d let y’all know that!
For those of you watching on a smart TV or whatever,
well I'm sorry, but I do put links in the description, too.
That also covers the inevitability that YouTube ditches cards in favor of some other thing some day.
hope they don't get rid of the description...
Anyway, today’s focus is on the thermostat.
That is in fact the central feature of this toaster
(well, actually the central feature is the heating element core... )
but I mean
most important feature, or at least seems to be given its name,
as it puts the radiant and control into Radiant Control.
These toasters, unlike modern ones, have two columns of heating elements on the sides,
and that allows for the thermostat’s bimetallic strip to sit
between them and be warmed by the bread’s surface through radiation.
It is shielded from the central heating element by the bread itself and these little metal fins shield
it from the side elements.
That makes it such that it becomes warmed mostly by the bread being toasted.
You might ask, “why do it that way?”
Well, according to Sunbeam, this allows the toaster to toast the toast to toasted perfection every toast.
And they’re right! Gloriously right.
Having the thermostat react to the surface temperature of the bread allows it to eliminate
variables such as the temperature of the toaster itself, the particular properties of the bread,
or the other variable which moved me to make this video
- the temperature of the bread.
This toaster is such a good and nice and wholesome and perfect and pleasant toaster
that it has changed my breakfast routine.
I was never much of a toast person,
in fact it had been years since I had toast with any regularity,
so to me this seemed like yet another addition to my Too Many Small Kitchen Appliances™ catalog.
But through the sheer delight of having my toast be prepared for me in such an automatic fashion
that it’s practically supernatural,
toast has become my jam!
And jam’s what I put on toast!
And the thing that pushed me to make this update for you was how this handles frozen bread.
You see, current circumstances require less frequent shopping for groceries with
larger amounts purchased with each outing.
As bread has now become a thing I have regularly,
this is somewhat problematic as bread sadly sports somewhat short shelf life.
If it doesn’t dry out first, you’ll need some shooting stars to deal with the mold.
But of course one has the option of freezing bread!
Put something in the freezer and it lasts a long time, including bread.
However, if you’ve ever dealt with a loaf of frozen bread, you’ll know that it kinda stinks.
It’s hard to let it thaw without getting soggy.
And if your goal is to toast it, well with a conventional toaster you’re gonna
have to adjust your toasting setting upwards quite a bit to deal with the fact that it’s frozen.
Maybe after a ton of experimentation you’ll dial it in just right,
but forget to set it back and your next fresh slice will end up in the burn ward.
But not with the Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster!
Watch what happens.
This is a slice of fresh honey-wheat bread.
I’ll put it in the toaster and we’ll see how long it takes to toast.
enjoy this awkward stare which I totally should not have done yet I did
[click from toaster]
[awkward pause]
It’s this long!
And now let’s take a look at what the bread looks like.
This here is our fresh slice of bread. This was not frozen; this is the darkness.
I will put it on a plate so we can compare later.
Now I’ll grab a slice of the same bread that’s been frozen.
See, this is quite cold
[sound of bread being flicked by finger] and pretty hard.
I have not touched the darkness control on the toaster at all - it’s exactly the same as it was for the fresh bread.
So now I’ll put the frozen bread in the slot, and wait.
[unintelligible fast squeaky speech which definitely doesn't contain a directive about a certain fruit]
[click]
It’s done!
So now let’s take a look at the bread.
Would you look at that! It’s pretty much the same exact darkness -
[through laughter] in fact I can hardly tell the difference at all -
as the fresh slice.
Frozen…
Fresh!
Pretty neat!
And it’s not just the color.
Going quickly from frozen to toasted produces toast that you’d be hard-pressed to know was ever frozen.
This has given me yet another reason to love this toaster.
Its indirect measurement of the bread’s surface temperature means that
it produces perfect results every time, even if the bread was frozen.
I say again to toaster manufacturers of the world;
why are you making such terrible toasters?
Occasionally y’all like to tweet at me with certain toaster models out there like a
Kitchen Aid model with a similar lever-less design or some sort of elaborately over-engineered
Japanese toaster which cost hundreds of dollars, and yet…
this *ancient* design endures.
It just works.
And it’s not even the automatic bread lifting that I really care about
(OK that’s a lie; it’s fascinating and probably why I’m eating toast again)
it’s the thermostat design
that really sets it apart.
As we discovered in the first toaster video
(the one about the electromagnet in your toaster)
manufacturers have been using time-based trips for a while,
and they’ve even been so clever as to design temperature-compensation
into the control circuitry to account for a just-used hot toaster.
I’m sure that has been Cost-Optimized Beyond Belief but this toaster shows us that
a simple bimetallic strip manages to do an objectively better job (if implemented correctly).
It not only compensates for a hot toaster, but for cold bread.
Still, we have some pesky limitations.
As I said in the earlier video, this toaster has fixed bread guides
and wouldn’t be very happy with a bagel.
Now of course,
you could easily modernize the toaster to include the modern squeezy-type bread guide thingies,
but bagels in particular might still present a problem.
If the hole lines up with where the bimetallic strip is,
the toaster will trip very prematurely like it does when there’s no bread in it at all.
But actually… well that’s the only limitation I can think of.
This toaster shows us that actually using the bread as a means to determine doneness
is wildly better than just setting a timer.
I mean, going beyond just frozen bread, using temperature also helps account
for things like denser breads, thinner or thicker slices, and a whole slew of other variables.
Why have we made time the be-all end-all determinant for toast doneness?
We have the technology!
Make better toasters!
Those little hand-held laser thermometer things seem like a good candidate for a modern sensor.
Just make a window through the sides where the heating elements are
and measure the surface of the bread!
I mean it would be even more precise than the Sunbeam!
It could literally be as precise as “toast until the bread reaches 237.8 degrees” or whatever.
Really.
Come on.
Doing that could help solve the problem of using those wierd curly-Q heating elements
on the sides.
Surely there are small enough sensors to just take a peek through a hole in…
whatever material this is.
Oh! And it could solve the hole-in-the bagel problem, too!
Just have a few sensors and ignore any that go super hot right away.
Honestly if nobody makes a reasonably-priced toaster in the next five years that can best this literal antique
in terms of basic toast-making ability,
well I’ll be so perturbed as to draft a letter!
Wait a minute.
I smell the potential to use the word "algorithmically."
These exist already, don’t they?
Probably in wildly over-engineered form.
And they’re “Smart,” too I bet.
*sigh*, of course they already exist, and with various degrees of overthinking.
Hey there, how are you supposed to toast some pumpernickel if you’re just looking at color?
Sunbeam figured this out ages ago!
They even wrote in the patent about how temperature correlates to darkness.
Oh well. I guess some knowledge just gets lost to time.
That’s it for this video. Literally just an update.
And some snark!
To be honest this finding wasn’t super surprising.
I just hadn’t had a reason to freeze any bread until recently.
My first thought was “you know, I bet the Sunbeam will just toast this perfectly”
and I was not disappointed!
Seriously.
All of you making toasters.
[gestures exasperatedly]
Just study this one.
I won’t even mind if you stick to the electromagnet scares-your-socks-off spring-loaded design, just…
make it toast well without going overboard on the smartness.
Sunbeam proved back in the ‘40s how great a temperature-sensing toaster is.
I think we can make one again in the 21st century.
Add a reasonable bagel mode, modernize the bread guides, widen the slots a bit for fancy
loafs of bread, and you’re good.
You’ll just need to market it properly, and you’ll have a hit on your hands.
This is free advice, people. I even promise to test any-such toaster
that may make it to market for less than $50 and make a video about it.
You don’t even need to send me one. I’ll just buy it.
Really, you all should be absolutely embarrassed by this toaster.
Now chop chop!
♫ innovatively smooth jazz ♫
You might ask…
start the teleprompter!
Oh ssshoot.
UGGHH.
Stupid…
remember in the teleprompter video when I said “don’t use the software I use?”
This is whyyyyy….
[Clears throat in a really weird and almost melodic way. It was amazing.]
I’d suggest you watch it first through that car(d) I’ve provided.
Card.
I did not provide you with a car!
That video touched briefly on what I’m a going abadehbuh
Just thought I’d let yaknall… knoeughblblb
I just wrote these lines! How could I forget them?
I’m having too much fun with this video…
If it doesn’t dry out… ahh, missed a word!
If the whole lines up to… up? With. What?
If the hole lines up to… fff
why did I say up to again?
Up with.
Alright. Know anyone who makes toasters?
It is your duty to get them to watch this video so they can be ashamed of their ineptitude.
It sounds harsh but really.
There are just no excuses for this.
None at all.