Toast isn’t a 20th-century invention: People had always stabbed slices of bread with sticks and held them over a flame. In the early 19th century, metalsmiths and manufacturers even produced special forks and tong-like utensils with metal cages at their ends to brown bread. But the toaster as we know it, the plug-in electric toaster, wasn’t possible until the turn of the century. You had to have access to electric current, and electric...Continue Reading