For most people, toasters are as basic as breakfast, as elemental as a wedding present, as common as stoves and as cheap as $20. Yet the humble bread toaster maybe one of the most abused, beguiled or unused kitchen tool depending on where you are coming from.

As wedding presents, I use to think that bread toasters and wedding presents are almost synonymous. They are the most popular presents for newlyweds (at least to those who refuse to examine the wedding registry) that it is not far fetched that one finds several bread toasters in the packages. In these cases, bread toasters are either recycled as presents to another newlywed or relegated into the attic unused and better not remembered until the current bread toaster breaks up. Then the reserve in the attic starts finding its use and popular place in the kitchen.

When it does, it becomes a very useful tool for preparing breakfasts and snacks, popping up hot toasts to warm hungry tummys until the springs or the heating coils fail and the humble bread toaster find a highway to the black bag.

Bread toaster varieties can come from the basic to the more sophisticated and yet it is not really a very simple machine so much so that if you have invented the toaster yourself, and if it can be patented, you might not be selling bread toasters for a cheap $20. Agreed? Think about it because heres how the bread toaster works.

Bread toasters use infrared radiation to heat a single piece of bread. When you set your bread toaster, the coil starts to glow red. As that happens the heat dries up the bread (that is why it feels like rubber to the bite when it turns cold) and chars the surface of the bread. Your basic bread toaster has two mica sheets that are wrapped in nichrome wires to make it glow faster. Nichrome wires have a high electrical resistance compared with coppers so that a short length can easily turn very hot. The nichrome wire in your bread toaster does not oxidize as fast as other wires that make it a tough customer in heating and an ideal component to toasting.

Old bread toasters do not have the pop up mechanism that present toasters have. What you did then was to insert the bread, plug the device and when the bread gets toasted you unplug the device, bang the toaster on an edge and down goes the bread. This is very messy practice and that would have been the demise of the poor toaster except that a pop up, spring acted tray mechanism was added. This simple addition prevented users from burning their fingers as they try to draw out the bread and prevented the scattering of crumbs on the table when you bang the bread toaster.

To make pop ups more convenient, a handle is pressed down and with it the bread. Three things happen next.

The nichrome wires are supplied with power, a timing device starts to tick and when the right time comes, out pops the bread. In some toasters, the power switch and the timer are both part of the handle.

When the power is turned on, volts of electricity run down the wires heating it up. Transistors, capacitors and resistors regulate power to the electromagnet that when a certain heat is reached, it stops automatically and that means breakfast.

I told you bread toasters are more complicated than simply heating your bread. If I thought all that up, I too wouldnt be selling it for $20.