Better Than Sliced Bread: Toasters
Given that you can actually slice your own bread, it strikes me as pretty strange that toasters aren't considered a better innovation than pre-cut loaves.
The electric, pop-up toaster was the brainchild of Charles Strite, who patented the device in 1921. (See the patent). But I won't bang on about toasters for ages - you can find a rather nice history at The Cyber Toaster Museum (and even strike up a conversation at one of the toaster forums). Let's appreciate instead the transparent beauty of this space age model from Inventables. Mmm, shiny, shiny.Better than sliced bread because:
The advantages of a toaster over a grill are obvious - vastly reduced toasting time, lower risk of charring, less cleaning, not to mention improved texture - whereas I fail to see any great advantage in saving yourself three seconds not slicing a piece of bread.
Roll-off-the-tongue factor:
Okay, okay, it's not great.
Innovation rating:
Obviously pop-up toasters are ingenious and far better innovations than sliced bread - we've cleared that one up. But is this really the best we can do? Let's be honest; toasters are still pretty old hat, despite Inventables' spangly new look version. "Best thing since toasters" holds a kind of poetic justice, but our mandate was to find something more modern, more funky, more down-with-the-kids. Toasters just aren't quite doing it for me.
SCORE: 6/10
Okay, so what's better than toasters?
Back to Five Things Better Than Sliced Bread
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