Universal Toaster

Toast indeed is universal. Who doesn't love toast? (p.s. we can't be friends if you don't love toast).  And this is a Universal Toaster, patented 1914.  I found it at a private estate sale a few weekends ago.  It still amazes me people have these 100+ year-old toasters laying around.  And based on its condition, this one apparently was laying around in a dark corner of an attic or basement.

I did my best to clean and polish it.  It's not perfect, but at its age, what is?

Its a model E9947 and was made by Landers, Frary & Clark of New Britton, Connecticut. As I mentioned, it was patented July 28th, 1914. That doesn't necessarily mean it was made in 1914, but I wouldn't put this past the early 1920s.

The doors rotate on a center axis allowing you to flip the bread to toast on each side.

The white spots on the coils are where I got a little sloppy with chrome polish. I'm hoping it eventually burns off.

I'm not sure what the feet are made of, possibly rubber that has hardened to an almost plastic consistency, but they squeak like nails on a chalkboard when the toaster slides across my counter (which it tends to do when I rotating the bread).

It toasts very nicely on one side...

But has issues on the other side, which is odd because the design is identical on both sides of the bread tray.

Landers, Frary & Clark began as "Dewey and Landers" in 1842, acquiring "Frary" and renaming themselves in 1862.  They were manufacturers of all things metal, including bull nose rings and mousetraps.  When electrification came around, they moved into the electric appliance business and had great success. They lasted until 1965 when they were sold to the J. B. Williams Company. At that time, General Electric took over their electric appliance business including toasters which they continued to manufacture for four years until they shutdown the Universal line.