Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch

http://www.ted.com It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Mornys]

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan

Surely applies to toasters too.

[Chronosaur]

I'm surprised how many haters you get with this talk. Yes it may be an obvious point, yes it may be an old idea, but if you put it in context by actually DOING something - like making a toaster - you can step back and get some perspective on just how far we've come as a species. I think that's amazing.

[Andreas Collvin]

awesome !

[smoog]

He's just very nervous, you dick. You try standing up in front of hundreds of people knowing that you're being videoed to be seen by hundreds of thousands and see how relaxed and calm you are.

[codenamerishi]

thankx for letting me know that dutch are as retard as americans, I didn't knew that,

[whoeveriam0iam14222]

now click on my channel

[codenamerishi]

How Creative

[codenamerishi]

fucking dumbcunt american

[Leo Sanjaya]

The important is the JOURNEY and PROCESS that his take to make that toaster!!

[Michael Jackson]

When I read the title I thought, "that's pretty simple," but then I realized early in the talk that, when he says from scratch, he means from SCRATCH! We're not talking about going to buy plastic from the store & then fitting it for a toaster case, we're talking going to the mines to mine the original elements! This was a great talk!

[Bert7076]

This is why people play minecraft. It takes ten seconds to turn ore to iron in that game. In real life it takes a plane trip and a day and a half of work.