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Charles Strite was fed up with burned toast. During World War I, Strite worked in a manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Minnesota. Company cafeterias can be as unsatisfactory as school cafeterias, and there was one thing about the company food that drove Strite especially crazy. Every morning the breakfast toast was burned.
The cooks had too much to do to keep a careful eye on the toast. Strite made up his mind to find a way of toasting bread that didn't depend on human attention.
Strite tackled the problem in his own workshop at home. He reasoned that the toast burned because it was left too long. First he built an adjustable timer that turned the heating element off. However, the heating element stayed hot after the power switched off. The toast could still burn unless it was taken out of the toaster. Someone had to come and remove the toast. Strite was back where he started, trusting busy cooks to pay attention to his toast.
The answer seemed to lie in finding a way for the toaster to take the toast out by itself. Strite experimented with a motor and springs. Then he linked the timer to the springs. Once the timer turned off the heating element, it released the springs and the slice of toast popped up. The only thing the cook had to do was put the bread in the toaster and switch it on. Strite's pop-up toaster did the rest.
Copyright ©1998 by Elaine Marie Alphin