I find this a bit bizarre. I've only taken a few toasters apart in the 90s, but they were examples of fairly complex control systems then. They didn't use timer

I find this a bit bizarre. I've only taken a few toasters apart in the 90s, but they were examples of fairly complex control systems then. They didn't use timers or thermometers directly, but instead modeled the "toast" as a physical thermal element that was heated by the coil current, isolated on long wires, and cooled by ambient temperature (like little analog computer). You'll notice that the second time you toast is faster than the first, because the toaster/elements are already hot. Those thermo-mechanical elements were cheaper and more reliable than some digital IC in the 90s. Likely current super modern $200 toasters use timers and thermometers along with numerical models (some use cameras) to brown your toast, but I don't think they're dumb. The power put into the element (the voltage, current, resistance) can be measured at 2 points, along with air temperature in the toaster or even radiant heat sensors for the toast surface and can all be combined into a Kalman or StateSpace estimator for the toast surface temp and radiant power cooking it. I don't know that the toast is that much better (for the price) now and they just have different failure modes. I love the old toaster technology (especially the auto rising toast!), but they're far from perfect and were quite expensive in their own time. Be really careful when cleaning them! p.s. the video is the only interesting part of the article.