A toaster is a small electric appliance that uses radiant heat to brown sliced bread into toast, the color caused from the Maillard reaction.

[1] Pop-up toasters can have a range of appearances beyond just a square box and may have an exterior finish of chrome, copper, brushed metal, or any colored plastic.

They are especially useful when the users do not also have a kitchen stove with an integral oven, such as in smaller apartments and recreational vehicles such as truck campers.

A conveyor toaster is an appliance that caramelizes and carries bread products on a belt or chain into and through a heated chamber.

From the 16th century onward, long-handled forks were used as toasters, "sometimes with fitment for resting on bars of grate or fender.

[10] Utensils for toasting bread over open flames appeared in America in the early 19th century, including decorative implements made from wrought iron.

[citation needed] A similar technical challenge had recently been surmounted with the invention of the first successful incandescent lightbulbs by Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison.

[12][13] The problem of the heating element was solved in 1905 by a young engineer named Albert Marsh, who designed an alloy of nickel and chromium, which came to be known as nichrome.

[23] In 1925, using a redesigned version of Strite's toaster, the Waters Genter Company introduced the Model 1-A-1 Toastmaster,[24] the first automatic, pop-up, household toaster that could brown bread on both sides simultaneously, set the heating element on a timer, and eject the toast when finished.

[27] In 2001, Robin Southgate from Brunel University in England created a toaster that could toast a graphic of the weather prediction (limited to sunny or cloudy) onto a piece of bread.

[30] In 2012, Basheer Tome, a student at Georgia Tech, designed a toaster using color sensors to toast bread to the exact shade of brown specified by a user.