Device for making toast that scans the bread surface with a digital spectroscope and a MASER. The MASER beam is focused down to a very small spot, at thousands of watts/cm2. It begins in the centre of the bread and generates a random walking path from there.

The spectroscope takes a reading from the path directly behind the MASER to determine level of burntitude. This information is passed into a neural network and expert machine which uses heuristics to weight the random number generator in favour of an optimised next step in the random path, in order to cover the entire area of the bread in the shortest time.

Over time and repeated toastings, it learns to flash-scan a piece of bread into hot, perfectly browned toast in mere seconds.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Apr 07 2010

Toaster Calibration Toaster_20Calibration
There could be some tie-ins with this other idea. [Wrongfellow, Aug 18 2010]

It smells deliciously like a pun.
-- Aristotle, Apr 07 2010


Brilliant [+]
-- zen_tom, Apr 07 2010


Ta, lads.

They could be alloy toasters, but I didn't think being shiny was a sufficient advance.

Um, did a little - umm, did I lie?
-- BunsenHoneydew, Apr 07 2010


And if they pop out too early, to reinsert them, a re - pop in switch?
-- pocmloc, Apr 07 2010


He always sounds so precocious.
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 07 2010


If you like oral hygiene, you may be interested to know that screw-up coloured fragile lipstick expels halitosis.
-- marklar, Apr 07 2010


or you can just pull the toast out when it's ready and feed it with a spoonful of sugar, and cinnamon.

dangerously close to a pun existing before the idea... +
-- dentworth, Apr 07 2010


+ I love puns for breakfast!!
-- xandram, Apr 07 2010


I heard his auntie dissed the establishment's Aryan system.
-- Canuck, Apr 07 2010


[marklar] That would have been useful to Ghandi, the barefoot paragon of Indian independence, who in his later life was beset by bunions, tooth decay and general ill health, making him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis
-- BunsenHoneydew, Apr 09 2010


I think such a system would never generate perfect toast but an asymtptotic curve - in advanced states of toastiness, the random path would be more and more likely to bring the MASER over previously toasted areas and there will always be a few remaining spots left raw. For the AI, the variable determining evolutionary fitness of a given algorithm could be the steepness of the initial curve, and possibly the ultimate distance from perfection at time x when the coffee is ready.
-- bungston, Apr 09 2010


that's pseudorandom bub. [+]
-- Voice, Aug 17 2010


//information is passed into a neural network and expert machine which uses heuristics to weight the random number generator in favour of an optimised next step// I like that part as much as the title.
-- mouseposture, Aug 17 2010



random, halfbakery