? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

“Hello, my name is Thomas Thwaites, and I have made a toaster.” So, The Toaster Project begins with a spoiler. The author documents his journey to build a toaster from scratch. Not “buy the parts and put them together” scratch, but “make the parts from scratch” scratch.

Thwaites mines and sources steel, plastic, mica, copper, nickel, and everything else that makes up one of the most common household appliances. He crafts all 404 components, and as the first line reveals, builds a toaster — not very well, but technically a functioning one.

Thwaites’ nine-month journey is inspired by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide tothe Galaxy,wherein the protagonist realizes that, “Left to his own devices, he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich, and that’s it.” After finding himself stranded on a planet with limited technological sophistication, and hoping to impress its residents, realizes that all his knowledge is dependent on preexisting tech.

Most interesting isn’t the final result of this experiment but the lesson learned. Building the toaster cost Thwaites 250x the cost of the cheapest commercial toaster available and involved over 3.2 km of travel, but the complexity of what we thought was a simple appliance forces us to reflect on the real cost of cheap consumer culture at the expense of the environment.

You can find it as an ebook on Amazon.

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