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I, Toaster
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009Over at Reason, I have a piece up looking at the lessons we can draw from a British artist’s attempt to build a common toaster from scratch.
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I wonder what its like to drive a car, eat food you don’t grow in restaurants you don’t own, talk on a cell phone you didn’t design and build, and openly complain about things that make your life so wonderful. Ignorance is truly bliss, except for those around you who must tolerate your foolish ignorance.
Thwaites was aiming at cleverness, but missed and hit ignorance instead.
I don’t like it when someone arbitrarily condemns progress. Without it we’d still be shitting where we sleep.
“I, Pencil” by Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, written in 1958:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
Off-topic:
Another reason to like Mark Sanford.
He apparently fucks around on his wife.
Oops.
Q: Did he get Spitzered?
There is virtually no point in history where mankind didn’t stand on the shoulders of their neighbors to make the things they needed.
Even the most hardy homesteader on the frontier relied on iron wheels for his wagon, steel tools, etc.
Even the Shakers, making simple, traditional furniture by hand before the advent of power tools relied on the latest technology to ply their craft.
The greatest leap of technology was to separate the need of the product from the making of the product through an economic abstract: money.
I don’t know. A conversation about “toast” and Mark Sanford can be related.
The most amazing thing to me about that whole affair is that a Governor of a state in the United States can get out of bed in the morning, say “Fuck it, I ain’t going to work this week” and fly off to Argentina without saying shit to anybody about anything.
That would get you fired at McDonalds.
Well played, flukebucket.
It is fallacious, though, to equate business and government. No two entities could be more unlike. A McDonalds worker is far more integral to the operation than the governor is to the state.
Great piece Radley.
Thwaites’ unintentional demonstration of the power of decentralized free markets reminds me a little bit of David Simon with The Wire. Here’s a self-described “social democrat”, who strongly advocates for an increase in worker unionization, social welfare, etc. And yet, his TV show — possibly the seminal entertainment work of the decade — goes to great lengths to show how stagnating, oppressive, dehumanizing, and ineffective large centralized institutions are.
Understood Cynical. And I think it is clear that Sanford has absolutely no respect whatsoever for the office he holds.
And that is okay I guess but I just can’t figure out why you would run for an office that you clearly disdain.
Is this the type of behavior a person should expect from believers in small government? I guess if you figure government is the problem then the more time you spend in Argentina and away from the office the better.
Now. Back to that toaster…………
So… I looked at the guy’s web site (The guy building a toaster)
What’s his point? He starts out using things more complex than toasters to attempt (poorly, I might add. I think he was trying to make a cupola furnace) to make a toaster.
If his point was to illustrate the quote from the book, then he needed to start with nothing but a wooded lot (or… many wooded lots… not all of them have iron ore or coal on them) and go from there.
“I think it is clear that Sanford has absolutely no respect whatsoever for the office he holds.”
Au contraire, I believe he has exactly the appropriate level of respect for the office he holds.
Roughly equal to the respect Governor LePetomaine in Blazing Saddles had.
“Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs!”
The most amazing thing to me about that whole affair is that a Governor of a state in the United States can get out of bed in the morning, say “Fuck it, I ain’t going to work this week” and fly off to Argentina without saying shit to anybody about anything.
That would get you fired at McDonalds.
And yet that action was applauded, apparently without irony, by quite a few people.
As for the toaster, the statement in the Reason article that “No single human being could possibly possess the know-how to make one on his own (toaster)” is simply untrue. The toaster is a fairly simple device (assuming you aren’t getting the ones with lots of useless features) and a mechanically inclined person with a little knowledge of chemistry could build one. I understand your point is that it is impractical (or practically impossible) to get the raw materials and process them by yourself, but the knowledge and skill required is moderately high, it doesn’t *require* super skills. .
>> As for the toaster, the statement in the Reason article that “No single human being could possibly possess the know-how to make one on his own (toaster)” is simply untrue…..a mechanically inclined person with a little knowledge of chemistry could build one.<<
Beg to differ. He’d have to know exactly what raw materials he needs and where to look for them. He’d have to construct a way to get to the geographic points where those raw materials are. He’d have to know how to mine them, properly isolate and clean them, and he’d need to build his own tools from scratch to do the mining. He’d have to know, intuitively, how to process and chemically alter them into toaster parts.
And that’s before we get to the electricity problem.
And remember, he can’t consult reference materials. That’s specialized knowledge.
#12
You miss the point. Processing the raw materials and assembling the toaster is just a tiny part of “making” a toaster, something I thought Radley explained quite clearly in his article. When you consider the expertise required to locate, extract, and transport the materials, including the manufacturing of all of the tools used in those endeavors, you end up with one king-hell list of things one would have to know to bring all the pieces of a toaster together in one place.
It’s truly staggering to contemplate.
I could build a modern toaster all by myself, but I would disguise it to look like a stick and a camp fire so that I could mass produce it and sell it to bozos who long for the good ol’ days when mankind was in harmony with the motherfuckin’ earth.
Dave, you have a gift.
Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Below is a link to a basic electric toaster that is made of basic materials. With a little ingenuity, it cold be made even simpler. Not very nice compared to a modern toaster I admit. And not all raw materials are that difficult to get. Batteries are fairly easy. I certainly couldn’t do it, but the skill set is fairly easy. I’m not attacking your main point.
http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/popular-mechanics/The-Boy-Mechanic-700-Things-for-Boys-to-Do/How-To-Make-An-Electric-Toaster.html
#12 | Nah. |– “And yet {Sanford] was applauded, apparently without irony, by quite a few people.”
I clarify that I am against Sanford in every way possible, stemming from the root problem of his politician status.
“Another reason to like Sanford” is the title of a blog post by our host. I was rather hoping a discussion would start on this latest example of “if ‘we’ can only get the right people in office…” and how “we” are ever-disappointed.
To be fair, I’m not sure that cheating on one’s wife has anything to do with anything political, but there can be no doubt that in the United State (instead of say France or Italy) infidelity is a political death sentence. So, Sanford has destroyed whatever “promise” he may have had by eliminating any possibility he’d ever exercise political power (for good or evil — you know which I believe all politicians tend towards).
Nah.–are you being intentionally obtuse? From your link:
The framework comprising the base and the two uprights may be made either of hardwood or asbestos board
drill 15 holes, 1/4 in. deep, into the inside face of each upright to support the No. 6 gauge wires shown
The wires that form the cage about the heater coil and are used for a support for the toast are 15 pieces of No. 6 gauge iron wire each 8 in. long.
secure one upright in position using 1-1/2 in. wood-screws
Are you telling me that you can make screws, asbestos paper, a drill, coil, iron wire, etc. all from scratch? “Getting” raw materials, in the context we’re using here, means mining them from the ground, refining them, purifying them, etc., all using machines that you’ve also made all by your lonesome, not buying them from your local hardware store.
“infidelity is a political death sentence.”
That only seems to be true for republicans.
Interesting article, Radley.
Once when I was working in my wood shop at home (pre-children), I picked up a steel ruler from about 1900 and started to wonder if there isn’t a tool genealogy sort of like a person’s genealogy. In other words, this tool was made with an earlier tool, which was made with an even earlier tool, etc., all the way back to the stone age.
I don’t get it. Grain, water, naturally occurring yeast, and a stick to make fire would achieve the objective. And I can get the grain from my socialist neighbor with his own garden by just giving him a few home brews. Toast accomplished.
It amazes me how people can come to such dramatically different conclusions when they’re looking at the same data. These different views, to me, are more arguments against central planning.
good job!
Nah,
You’re not quite getting it, are you? The point, I mean.
#16, Nah:
You’re missing the point.
I could build a toaster. I know what a cupola furnace is, I have advanced knowledge. I could go onto a wooded lot and build a facility capable of making a toaster.
But… NOT in a world with no Toasters, with no prior knowledge of Toasters. Sir Issac Newton was ignorant in a lot of things, he essentially devoted his life to Alchemy… a failed pseudo-science. But still had time to invent newtonian physics and an astonishing body of work on optics… he had a saying:
“If I have seen far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants”
Those giants he speaks of are every person with an idea that came before. Every person who toils … for a BUCK… to make the things he needed to forward his research like brass plates, glass prisms, the pencils he laboriously scribed his hypothesis with (Ok, he used a quill pen… same difference.)
All those people… laboring for a BUCK, made his efforts possible. And.. eventually… made the development of the Toaster possible.
THAT is the power of the market.
The Fark thread on this is remarkably dumb.
“Well, just ‘cuz command economies are horribly inefficient doesn’t mean they’re not better than capitalism!”
Nah,
I read your toaster link, I suspect most people would get stuck on the second required item, wire. I bet with some inguenity the #6 guage wire might be worked out (and as its use is merely as a framework it could be substituted, but 80 feet of #22 gauge wire would be nearly impossible. For the non-technical, #22 gauge wire is 0,7 mm wide. Think dental floss, but less durable.
This one item would be difficult to substitute for and if you don’t have even thickness over all 80 feet of it your toast won’t cook evenly. Thicker wire = less resistance = less heat.
For each heating element, I would think it might be easier to have a couple of pieces of very conductive (thick) wire close together, with a slightly-conductive piece of material between them. Under such a scenario, the areas where the material was thickest would tend to generate the most heat, which would in turn cause the material there to become thinner, thus producing a self-regulating system. Some experimentation would be required to find materials with suitable conductivity and thermal durability, but the issue would not seem intractable.
Now we are missing the point :) but thicker means less heat not more. Thicker gives a wider path for the electricity to flow through, thus less resistance and less heat. So if the material somehow got thinner it would be unstable rather than self regulating
I think I could make a toaster.
Using regular sticks for the frame and cord made of some easy to use fiber*, I’d weave two squares of about five inches by five inches with half an inch or so between the cords. Attach a long stick to the bottom of one of them. That one is now “the bottom one”
I’d put “the top one” on top of “the bottom one” securing at one side with more cord*
I’d dip the whole thing in a bucket of water or a lake for good measure.
OK, now I’d take a piece of bread, put it between the two squares and then use more cord to close the thing around the bread and keep the top on.
I could hold it over the fire and as long as it didn’t get too close, the bread would slowly turn to toast. I’d have to hold it a little higher than one would hold a marshmallow, and it would take a bit, but I bet it would work.
IMHO, this guy’s issue is his definition of the word “toaster”
CC
*Or vines, if I sucked at making cord
You’re correct that bigger wire is less resistance, but you’re wrong that more resistance makes for more heat.
I=E/R and P = I * E
I = current in amps
E = voltage in volts
R = resitsance in ohms
P = power in watts
Assuming voltage stays the same (which it does at your wall outlet), increasing resistance decreases current. Since power (heat dissipated) is proportional to current, heat decreases.
The artist misses the essential point that he has KNOWLEDGE that a toaster even exists, what it does, and why it is beneficial. Even without knowing how how to make it he is ahead of those who lack this knowledge. He is way ahead of people a little over a hundred years ago who didnt even know about electricity.
I am a patent lawyer, former scientist, and often hear about how something is “obvious.” Of course this statement is always made from the perspective of having the thing in front of you. Just knowing that something exists is a bigger step than many people realize.
I’m not sure the voltage stays the same though. By your math if I use an very thick wire on my toaster (say total R = 0.001 Ohm) I=110/.001 Ohm= 11kA, this would be a lot of Power/ Heat generation. However it isn’t the toaster that will get warm it’s the blown fuse in your basement.
For the design of a toaster I’d say R is fixed rather than E. You probably want to have R set such that I < 5 Amps (so not to blow a fuse). In that case Power is fixed and the heat generated comes from the places with the biggest voltage drops in the circuit which correspond to where there is the most resistance.
No, Mike. If you build a device that blows the fuse, it’s not called a toaster, it’s called a short. :D
For the amount of power needed to operate a toaster, for all practical purposes, the line voltage stays constant. They select a value of R for the heating element that provides the required heat.
For example, if they want a 1000W element at 110V, they would solve for the required resistance.
R = E^2/P 110^2/1000 = 12.1 ohms
The wires that carry the electricity to the heating element will be big, have less resistance, less voltage drop, and generate less heat. It’s the element that does the work and the element has to be designed for the voltage that will be applied. To change the voltage would require a transformer which is expensive and heavy.
damn dave, not just a photography geek but a math nerd too? You’re a well rounded kinda guy.
“have less resistance, less voltage drop, and generate less heat”
I think this is the exact same statements I was making, without going into extra technical details. Less resistance = Less heat in this configuration.
I was never saying they would change the line voltage, I was saying there would be voltage drops through the circuit down from the line voltage and this is where the heat is generated. The voltage drops are due to resistance so here more resistance = more heat.
My real point was to disagree with #28 who asserted that the thicker wires would generate more heat and they presumably under some tension he doesn’t describe would get thinner to the point where they would generate less heat.
Good news, the supreme court ruled that the strip search of that schoolgirl was illegal. There was only one dissenting opinion, surprisingly from Thomas. I only say surprising because I thought it would be Alito.
Here’s some good news:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/25/national/main5112597.shtml
Radley appears to be slacking lately so:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090625/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_strip_search
Perhaps even more important that the strip search case (implementation is fuzzy) was the holding that criminal defendants have a constitional right to cross-examine forensic analysts. This is pretty clear cut, and opens the door to exposing all sorts of abuses that Radley rights about here.
“Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the high court, said “the analysts’ affidavits were testimonial statements, and the analysts were ‘witnesses’ for purposes of the Sixth Amendment”. Therefore, Melendez-Diaz has a constitutional right to confront the lab analyst.”
Damn, my spelling really sucks today. “write” “than” etc. I need coffee………
Assuming you used an oven to bake your bread, you already have a toaster.
#21 Ben (the other one) – There’s a great show that ran awhile back on PBS (BBC production IIRC) called Connections. I think they did several series actually. The host would start the show by saying how A led to B, with B being seemingly unrelated. Then he’d tell the story of the series of inventions/discoveries that allowed B to eventually be invented. Truly an excellent show; I think you can still get the set on DVD, which I intend to eventually do….
(to clarify, I mean “with B being seemingly unrelated to A”)
The total power consumed/dissipated by a collection of series-wired resistive wire(s) will be the square of the voltage divided by the resistance. Thus, the lower the resistance, the more power will be consumed. If wire is made of a consistent material, thicker wire will have lower resistance than thinner wire.
However, the amount of resistance dissipated by a portion of a collection of series-wound resistive wires will be the square of the line voltage, multiplied by the resistance of the portion, divided by the square of the total resistance. Thus, if a small portion of the wire is thinner than the rest, its higher resistance will reduce the amount of power dissipated by the rest of the wire, but increase the amount of heat dissipated by itself.
The most extreme case would be an infinitesimally-short section of wire being so thin as to have a resistance which equals that of everything else put together. In that scenario, since the total resistance will be twice what it would have been without the thin spot, so the total power dissipated will be half. On the other hand, half of that reduced total power will be dissipated in the infinitesimally small section of wire. If the whole toaster would have consumed 500 watts but for a small very thin spot in the wire, that thin spot could dissipate 125 watts–enough to get very hot.