The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch
tudouwang
Appliance from Scratch Quirky and Enjoyable, September 21, 2011
By Gilgamesh (Middle Earth) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) This review is from: The Toaster
Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from
Scratch (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
In The Toaster Project Thomas Thwaites documents his attempt to build
a toaster from scratch. This entails a lot of work, money, and
research that produces a compelling narrative about a modern device
that usually receives little attention.
The project is impractical and "ridiculous," but the author tells the
story well, and I feel like I got something out of reading it. I am
not sure it was what he intended for me to take away from it, because
I don't share his take on the issues he raises in it about our mass
consumer culture. I also don't think the project actually provides
much support for the agenda he is trying to advance, and he seems at
times to be forcing his quirky endeavor to make arguments that it
isn't designed to sustain. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable story. I'd
also like to add that the photography is superb and the text is
arranged beautifully; it's nice to see a book receive so much care and
attention in its production.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"As befits the project, the book is hilarious. I never though reading
about iron smelting and descents into mines would be so engrossing."--
We Make Money Not Art
"One of the most exciting books to come across my desk in the last
while.... A hilarious, wonderfully wrought account of how hard it is
to really make anything from scratch, much less an electronic device."
-- Aaron Britt, Dwell.com
"It's fun, and you'll get a little smarter, and maybe you'll
appreciate our ancestors and their smarts a little more." -- Science
2.0
"Incredibly entertaining and well-written." -- International Sculpture
Center blog
"I particularly admired his can-do attitude and loved his heroic
ignorance-is-bliss abuse of a microwave oven." - ElectronicsWeekly.com
"Funny and thoughtful" -- the Boston Globe
"At once a charming manifesto for the maker movement and a poetic
reflection on consumerism's downfall, The Toaster Project is a story
of reacquainting ourselves with the origins of our stuff, part Moby-
Duck, part The Story of Stuff, part something else made entirely from
scratch." -- Brain Pickings
Book Description
Publication Date: September 28, 2011
Where do our things really come from? China is the most common answer,
but Thomas Thwaites decided he wanted to know more. In The Toaster
Project, Thwaites asks what lies behind the smooth buttons on a mobile
phone or the cushioned soles of running sneakers. What is involved in
extracting and processing materials? To answer these questions,
Thwaites set out to construct, from scratch, one of the most
commonplace appliances in our kitchens today: a toaster. The Toaster
Project takes the reader on Thwaites s journey from dismantling the
cheapest toaster he can find in London to researching how to smelt
metal in a fifteenth-century treatise. His incisive restrictions all
parts of the toaster must be made from scratch and Thwaites had to
make the toaster himself made his task difficult, but not impossible.
It took nine months and cost 250 times more than the toaster he bought
at the store. In the end, Thwaites reveals the true ingredients in the
products we use every day. Most interesting is not the final creation
but the lesson learned. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the
costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness
of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense
of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with
fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects
that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether. Foreword
by David Crowley, head of critical writing at the Royal College of Art
and curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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