The Big Question

Why are there toasters?
   I know that doesn't sound like such a big question, but think about it for a moment. Most of our appliances are designed to take something tedious, like washing dishes, and automate the task. A blender is just a mortar and pestle with a cord, a washing machine is a mangle you don't have to crank, a microwave is a really fast, nuclear oven.
   But what are toasters designed to replace?
   In other words, if you didn't have a toaster, how would you go about toasting bread? If you didn't have a blender you'd chop food up by hand and if you didn't have a washing machine you'd use the sink (or go down to the river). But if you didn't have a toaster, chances are pretty good you wouldn't figure out a way to make toast, you'd just do without.
   When I was a kid I saw a contraption Texas settlers used for browning bread over an open fire, it was a cage-like thing that clamped food - not just bread - inside. So they did have a way to char up yesterday's dinner rolls, and today you can pay too much for almost the same thing at Williams Sonoma and use it on your barbeque grill. They're great for fish, if you're in the market. But bread? I'm not so sure. Seems like more trouble than it's worth.
   It seems to me that modern toasters got popular with the invention of modern sliced bread. It's a new appliance for a new age, not to automate any previous task but to create an entirely new one, the modern breakfast. All the things we think of as a balanced breakfast - juice, toast, cereal, milk - are modern, made possible by changes to manufacturing, farming, and society during the second industrial revolution at the end of the 19th Century. New food, new habits, and a new society need new gadgets.
   Could you do without a toaster? Sure, same way you could do without a TV, a microwave, and a blow dryer. But what kind of life would that be?