The transparent toaster

Here’s a kitchen gadget that has me intrigued; it’s a transparent toaster. If you’ve already ordered the stylish-looking transparent radiator, then this gadget is a must have.

I’m always burning toast, either because the bread’s too thin, the timer’s too long or too short (too short I run the toaster a second time and still burn the toast), but with this gadget even I can’t go wrong.

With a transparent toaster in the kitchen I can watch the bread turn a perfect golden brown colour and hit the button when it’s ready.

There’s only one slight problem though. I found the toaster via the excellent Gizmodo blog, and followed the link to the product page. As the page was loading I noticed the url contained the words “Concept Studio” and thought “Uh oh…” Sure enough, the thing’s only a design concept and not a working device. The problem is that at the moment they haven’t found a glass that will get hot enough to cook the toast.

I’m wondering how they got the cool idea though. I’ve heard that people on the Wacky Baccy are often quite partial to toast, and looking round the Inventables Concept Studio website, I’m seeing some evidence that they regularly get partial to a bit of toast too…. haha just kidding guys.

Anyway, I want one of these transparent toasters! There must be an answer to the problem; maybe using a sintered glass and an external, infra red laser might do the trick. The laser’s not a bad idea because you can scan the laser across the toast to get the perfectly uniformly toasted bread. A rastering, infra red laser might be expensive though.

I’ve got a feeling ordinary quartz can withstand temperatures exceeding 1000 C. Anyway, if there are any materials scientists out there that can turn this concept gadget into a working toaster – be sure to drop us a line!