Why Is Nobody Making the Best Toaster Ever Made?

Being a harmonica enthusiast isn’t the only thing I have in common with Elwood Blues. I also love me some toasted bread, though I actually prefer egg challah with sweet butter and strawberry preserves, to dry, white toast. To make toast these days, most folks either use a toaster oven, which to me seems like overkill for just a couple of slices, or a pop-up electric toaster. While both of those will char bread quite adequately, I prefer to use the best bread toaster ever made, a Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster, in my case a model T-35, made sometime between 1958 and 1967, close to my own vintage.

While America was busy making rockets and inventing solid state integrated circuits to put men on the moon, an appliance company was using basic physics and mechanics to make an automatic toaster the likes of which has never been improved upon. Continue Reading →

Guest Post: For Old Time’s Sake

Over the last couple of weeks, I have written two articles about my evolving relationship with technology.  In the first, I discussed the reasons for my reluctance to purchase a cellular telephone for my middle-school aged son while, in the second, I talked about why I am opting to use what many people have told me is a substandard workaround to play digital audio through the factory stereo in my new-to-me Nissan Hardbody.  Although both essays were intended to be short and simple, I found them difficult to write.  The second piece was especially so as, to get at the truth, I had to acknowledge the fact that I have a history of making poor choices and that I have, over the years, been incredibly wasteful.

But even though I struggled to write that second piece, I understand that many people my age are in the same boat.  To paraphrase one commenter, the entirety of Generation X came of age during a period when, thanks to the pace of technological advance, our music collections became obsolete again and again.  He’s not wrong.  Virtually every machine I included as proof of my poor decision making abilities was superseded by improved technology and, because I am not an early adopter, that happened only when the machines were so outdated that it became difficult to find new releases on the old media.  It turns out, then, I had hung onto things!  But that led me to another question: Which of my possessions is the oldest? Continue Reading →