MARCH OF PROGRESS
As mad experiments go, it didn’t seem that unhinged. In 2008, a British design student with the wonderfully alliterative name of Thomas Thwaites decided he would try to build a toaster from scratch.
When he took one apart to see how it might be done, he discovered something unexpected: this most simple of kitchen devices was not simple at all. It had an astonishing 400 components made from 100 different materials.
The intrepid Thwaites, who would go on to experiment with living as a goat in the Swiss mountains, was not deterred. After nine months and enormous effort, he succeeded in creating his rudimentary toaster. It never browned a single slice of bread. Five seconds after being switched on, Thwaites’ attempt at a toaster melted down.
What can we learn from this? Well, this failed experiment is a simple, “salutary example” of the distance the human race has travelled, says Philip Coggan, a journalist for the Economist, and the author of a new book, More: The 10,000-year rise of the world economy.
Where once mankind survived with simple tools many people could make, now even the most mundane of household objects are beyond one person’s wit to assemble.
That is not simply because we don’t know how, says Coggan. So many of the everyday things we now use and own – be it toasters, toothpaste or TVs – have been made with materials
