9 July 2009
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While at design school, I once took apart a toaster to understand how it worked, how each component was related to the other, toasting almost magically to perfection every time. Thomas Thwaites approached it the other way around: what does it take to make a toaster? Exactly what complex industrial process is behind the making of a 7$ toaster? What are we — the user — missing in the story of the object? How much and what kind of matter needs to be transformed? How? He ends up smelting iron ore in a microwave. More pictures here.
I love that he quotes Douglas Adams:
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.”
Mostly Harmless , Douglas Adams, 1992