Too short, but amazing account (and an interesting wake up call) on the impossibility of building anything from scratch today. ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2022-06.html#thwaites ( )

“Is a microwave anything more than a glorified fire? Is it fundamentally different?”
—“The Toaster Project,” Thomas Thwaites, 76

I thought this book would be quick and disposable. I was half right. I started and finished this yesterday in my quest to read all the books I own but don’t think I’ll want to keep hold of, in order to clean my overflowing bookshelf (and tables, and shelves, and floor). I quite enjoyed it, and don’t think I’ll be able to get rid of it just yet.
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination (Thwaites builds a toaster but does not try toasting in it, for example) but it was charmingly designed, a pretty snapshot of late 2000s. The mixed format, the font choice, the interspersed photos, and the prose itself took me right back to what I used to love about Wired magazine. It’s fresh, it’s an interesting story about someone who chooses an odd project and tenaciously follows it through, thinking out each step and working around obstacles. The bits of history, theory, and talk about how to fit our lifestyles into the world we live in (and the crises we’ve created) were especially interesting to me.
This book’s shortcomings were likely a result of its framing. It really did read like a graduate project. If the author had not had a deadline of graduation, he might have completed his project better. If he’d had more experience or wisdom when framing his goals, and maybe more resources and professionals instead of quite so much press coverage, he might have been able to incubate the project longer, bring it to better fruition, get into a little bit more about the manufacturing process as it is and as it could be. This was worth the hour and a half. It’s not a full exploration of the topic but doesn’t claim to be. ( )

Making things from scratch and buying local is what all the cool kids are doing, so Thomas Thwaites decided to take this trend a step further and attempt to build a common household appliance. Sounds simple enough, right? Not quite. This is a fascinating look at what happens when an inquiring, creative and bright mind is allowed some freedom to work. Thwaites combines history, science, technology, and a good bit of time and effort in his “heroic attempt to build a simple electric appliance;” his adventures are highly entertaining, humorous, and illustrated with great photographs of his work in progress. ( )

The Toaster Project was an attempt by Thwaites to build a modern appliance, in this case a toaster, from scratch. Starting with digging up the required ores and fabricating plastic and electrical cables etc from the raw materials. The concept of this book is incredibly interesting, but the author failed in his attempt to build a toaster from scratch, without making use of modern equipment such as a leaf blower instead of the usual old-fashioned bellows, a microwave instead of a furnace etc. I also got the impression that the author got bored with his project halfway through and lost interest. The writing isn't all that eloquent or explanatory either, with a half-hearted attempt at reflecting on the cheap consumer culture. The book is amusing and does make a valid point, but this was a missed opportunity to write a great book to explore modern consumer culture, the advance of technology and the creation of the modern age.

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