Sunbeam Radiant Control Model T20

Region

United States

Associated With

Sunbeam Corporation - manufacturer

Defining Feature

Leverless bread loading with radiant thermal control

Status

Unknown - final production date not established

Overview

Sunbeam’s Radiant Control T20 lowered bread and raised toast automatically, without a push-down handle.

Placing a slice in the marked slot pressed a trip lever, allowing the carriage to descend. A bimetal thermostat responded to heat radiated from the bread and cut the power. As the centre-element wire cooled and contracted, its linkage raised the toast.

Sunbeam’s parts list records manufacture of the T20 in April 1949, followed by the T20A in August 1950 and T20B in August 1952. These successive versions formed part of the Radiant Control family.

Why It Mattered

Bread can reach a different degree of browning in the same elapsed time, depending on its condition and how hot the toaster already is. Sunbeam’s control addressed that problem by responding to the bread’s surface temperature. The design made the food itself part of the control system, while automatic lowering and lifting reduced the manual steps involved.

Leverless Loading and Lift

• Inserting a slice depressed the trip lever, allowing the bread lifter to descend under its own weight rather than through a conventional push-down handle.
• As the centre-element wire cooled and contracted, the bread lifter assembly raised the toast.
• Sunbeam’s service bulletin describes this as a linked thermal and mechanical action rather than electronic sensing.

Radiant Thermal Control

• The bimetal thermostat responded to heat radiated from the bread surface, not heat conducted from it.
• The thermostat controlled the electrical circuit while the heating element, thermal wire and linkage moved the carriage.
• US Patent 2,459,169, granted to Ludvik J. Koci in January 1949, describes a radiation-responsive toaster thermostat.

Models, Dates and Design Credits

• Sunbeam’s parts list records manufacture of the original T20 in April 1949, followed by the T20A in August 1950 and T20B in August 1952.
• The recorded manufacture month is not an exact consumer retail-launch date.
• The Henry Ford credits Ludvik J. Koci as engineer and Ivar Jepson and Robert Davol Budlong as designers for Sunbeam Corporation.

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