Every Tea Room needs a toaster topic...

Making toast over the old ceramic slab was still the norm in Iran in 1985.

When the element burned through, they used to locate the break and drop paperclips onto to it to bridge the gap so that breakfast could proceed!

No one mentioned Health and Safety there! If you'd been there, you would know why. Coupled with the Iran/Iraq war, (Driving after dark without lights during an air raid was quite usual) the life expectancy must have been pretty low.

Dual carriageways could be two way roads, on both carriageways! Couldn't read Farsi, but maybe the Highway Code said "Every man for himself". Welding brackets to petrol tanks, and so on.

Am sure that their sense of logic differed from ours.

Was not too upset to return to UK!

Howard

Agreed Howard - last time I was there was in '77 . We always fitted quick-disconnects between line termination blocks and any electronic equipment with strict instructions to disconnect before reporting line faults to Tehran PTT, since the PTT response was to Megger the line, probably with muttered Farsi of 'that should blow the cobwebs away'
Was well pleased (later ) not to get the on-station placement in Nov '77 in view of how things fell apart
DaveD

many moons ago I discovered that you could make toast on the wall mounted electric fire in my room, Clip the bread to a wire coat hanger and hang it from the front grill. Always tasted better somehow, but not much good for making toasties

Thanks for info and toast-related reminiscences. Looking at the patent MichaelG found (thanks Michael) it looks like the toaster I have is developed from the Copeman design, but not a direct copy. Looking at the box:

I thought 1950's, but wondered if the design of the toaster would have persisted for so long after the invention of the pop-up only a few years after Copeman's 1914 patent. However as people have memories of them from the 50's/60's they must have been around then. Maybe pop-ups were really expensive at that time.

Further research tells me that the Premier Electric Co. was active in the 1930's, but I haven't found the model I have - the 1930's ones were rather more ornate. Maybe post-war austerity?

My secret hope was that the producer of Money for Nothing might read this and arrange a meeting at the tip. It could easily be repurposed - a nice bit of fabric, splash of paint, a few resistors, and voila - a retro-chic heated hamster sofa. Worth 200 quid of anyone's money. Any other suggestions?

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 09/02/2019 23:51:06

Edited By Robin Graham on 10/02/2019 00:04:18

Edited By Robin Graham on 10/02/2019 00:04:47

But if you aimed it carefully it could shoot the finished sandwich directly onto your plate surely??

Many years ago a former wife owned a toaster almost the same as Robin's which was shown in the original post, it worked perfectly and without fail turned the toast when the lid was lowered. It was slightly different in one detail however and that was that the ridge upon which the slice of bread rested when in the closed position, was curved i.e. convex, so that as the lid was lowered the slice easily slid off of the curved base toasted side downwards. When the said wife departed, the toaster departed too- - -and despite looking for many years, I never saw another ( toaster that is   until last year our mutual friend Google found this ………….

which is not bad at all, but not automatic, though with a bit of additional metalwork could be made so! It is Moulinex, seemingly only available from Spain where they are sensible enough to not worry that stupid people might be able to electrocute themselves by being able to touch the elements, or burn their house down because the only control requires enough brain function to be able to operate the OFF switch.

I suppose that really it's a just a posh version of Duncan's electric fire and coat hanger, but you can do perfect toast on it...…………………………………...or burnt

Trevor