By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
As long as new gadgets and gizmos keep coming, history shows we Americans will be fascinated enough to spend whatever it takes to own the latest doodad.
Today’s mindboggling inventions seem to unfold on a daily basis, especially in electronic technology, ranging from phones to drones.
But I’m not going to talk about space age stuff this time. Instead, here are the long-secret details of my first adventure of scientific discovery into the mysteries of…are you ready?…robotic food preparation.
In fact, this personal breakthrough in what became known as automation happened in the mid-1950’s when I was about 12 years old.
Until then, home toasters were crude contraptions where you loaded the bread onto side panels and pushed them up to the heating coils. If you didn’t keep track of time, your toast would be burned to a crisp.
Try to imagine the excitement of a curious young boy when his mother came home with a shiny, new automatic toaster.
The bread went into the top slot and you pushed it down to start the toasting process. Not only did you not have to keep time but the perfectly browned toast popped up when it was ready to be eaten.
Dad was out of town and Mom had gone off to work. My older brother and younger sister were not around.
I just knew I was on the frontier of science that morning when I sat down at the kitchen table with this marvelous new invention, plus a loaf of bread, butter, jams and jellies.
Granted, I knew very little about the scientific process but I had to know if the apparatus would work each time.
I made a journal entry in my mind each time I loaded the bread, pushed it down, lifted it out, buttered and jellied or jammed it and then carefully ate each slice.
No telling what I might have discovered had I not consumed the entire loaf of bread and developed a major tummy ache. Yep, the toaster worked fine.
Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com.
(Reprinted by request from September 2016)
