A toaster reference index
A slot has three measurements.
Almost nobody publishes all three.
One spec sheet prints length and depth. The next prints length and width. A third describes the slot in adjectives and gives you no number at all. None of those can be compared to each other, which is why people keep buying a long slot toaster that will not take their bread.
So we store the three axes separately, name the source behind every figure, and leave the gap visible when a number has never been published.
Slot length, drawn to scale
Clears the bar Under it Never published
The three numbers
Each axis fails differently
Length
≥ 10″
The long axis, and the one the category is named after. Below ten inches you cannot lay two sandwich slices side by side, which is the main practical reason to own the shape at all. Toasters are sold as “extra long” at six and a half inches.
Width
≈ 1.5″
The short axis of the opening. This is what a bagel or a thick sourdough slice fails on, and it is the axis most often left out of a spec sheet entirely. A slot can be eleven inches long and still refuse a bagel.
Depth
≥ 5″
How far down the slot goes. Shallower than five inches and a tall slice off a round loaf stands proud of the opening and comes out with a pale untoasted band across the top. Least considered, most complained about.
Measure your bread, not the toaster
Lay your longest slice flat and measure the long edge. That number, plus about half an inch to get your fingers in, is what the slot has to be.
Move the slider to see which slots take it.
The index
Every model we hold a figure for
Sorted by slot length, longest first. Discontinued models stay in, because if you own one you still need to know what it measures. A dash is not an oversight — it is a figure nobody has ever published.
| Model | Length | Width | Depth | Medium toast | Availability | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dash Clear View Long Slot Toaster DVTS501 | 10.5″ | — | 5″ | 2 min 12 sec | Currently sold | Measured 2/3 |
| Oster 4-Slice Long-Slot Toaster TSSTTR6330-NP | 10.38″ | — | 4.75″ | 2 min 3 sec | Discontinued | Measured 2/3 |
| KitchenAid 2-Slice Long Slot Toaster with High-Lift Lever KMT3115ER | 10.25″ | 1.5″ | 5.5″ | 2 min 13 sec | Discontinued | Measured 3/3 |
| Magimix Vision Toaster 11526 | 10.25″ | — | 6.88″ | 1 min 25 sec | Currently sold | Measured 2/3 |
| Smeg 4-Slice Toaster TSF01 | 10.25″ | — | 5.5″ | 2 min 58 sec | Currently sold | Measured 2/3 |
| Breville the ‘A Bit More’ 4-Slice Long Slot BTA730XL | 10″ | 1.56″ | — | 2 min 8 sec | Currently sold | Measured 2/3 |
| Elite Gourmet 4-Slice Long Slot Toaster ECT-3100 | 10″ | 1.5″ | — | — | Currently sold | Published 2/3 |
| Zwilling Enfinigy 2 Long Slot Toaster 53102-000 | 10″ | 1.5″ | — | 1 min 50 sec | Currently sold | Measured 2/3 |
| Hamilton Beach Gourmet 2-Slice with Extra-Long Slots 22996 | 6.5″ | — | — | — | Currently sold | Published 1/3 |
| Cuisinart Long Slot Toaster CPT-2500 | — | — | — | — | Discontinued | Published 0/3 |
Before you buy
Six things to check, in the order they bite
Length, at least ten inches
Under ten inches you cannot lay two sandwich slices side by side, which is the main practical reason to own the shape. Plenty of toasters sold as long slot measure six or seven.
Width, around an inch and a half
Width is what a bagel or a thick sourdough slice fails on, and it is the axis most often left out of a spec sheet entirely.
Depth, at least five inches
Shallow slots leave the top strip of a tall slice pale and untoasted. Depth is the axis buyers think about least and complain about most.
What the element is made of
Wire is standard. Quartz heats and cools faster. Mica-wound elements come out of catering. None of the three is automatically better, but they behave differently at the ends of the dial.
How you get the toast out
A long slot is a long reach. A high-lift lever or a motorised carriage is the difference between retrieving a crumpet and fishing for it.
Whether you can see in
A window or a lift-and-look button removes the guesswork that produces the classic failure: put it back in for a little more colour, burn it.
History
The most repeated answer was a hoax for ten years
In February 2012 a group of students edited Wikipedia to claim that a man named Alan MacMasters invented the electric toaster in Edinburgh in 1893. A biography followed in 2013. Newspapers repeated it, children’s reference books printed it, and in 2018 the name was among those put forward for the Bank of England’s £50 note. It was exposed in July 2022 and it is still what a lot of pages tell you.
The real record is less tidy and more interesting: no single inventor, a chain of separate problems solved by separate people between 1893 and 1926, and a durable heating element as the thing that had to come first.
- 1893
The Eclipse
Crompton & Company of Chelmsford, Essex sells the first stand-alone electric toaster. Its bare wires toast one side of a slice at a time, so somebody has to stand there and turn the bread over.
Source: Wikipedia, Toaster
- 1905
Nichrome solves the element
Albert Marsh patents a nickel-chromium alloy that survives being taken to red heat over and over without going brittle. Until this exists there is no durable toaster of any shape, long slot or otherwise.
Source: US Patent 811,859
- 1906
The first US toaster patent
George Schneider of the American Electrical Heater Company in Detroit files for an electric cooker, working with Marsh.
Source: US Patent 825,938
- 1909
General Electric D-12
The first commercially successful electric toaster. Still one side at a time, still a bare element on a ceramic base, but it sells, and the appliance stops being a curiosity.
Source: US Patent 950,058, F. E. Shailor
- 1913
A machine that turns the bread for you
The Copeman Electric Stove Company introduces a toaster with an automatic bread turner, removing the one job every earlier toaster left to the cook.
Source: Wikipedia, Toaster
- 1921
Charles Strite patents the pop-up
A timer and a spring. The toast ejects itself, which means the machine no longer needs a person watching it. Every slot toaster since, long or short, is a variation on this patent.
Source: US Patent 1,394,450
- 1925
The Toastmaster 1-A-1
Waters Genter takes a redesigned Strite mechanism to the home market: both sides at once, on a timer, ejecting when done. Sources differ between 1925 and 1926 for the retail launch.
Source: Toaster Museum Foundation
- 1938
The Toast-O-Lator
A domestic conveyor toaster goes into limited production. Bread walks through a heated tunnel and out the other end. It is a dead end commercially, but it is the first attempt at a machine sized around the loaf rather than around the slice.
Source: The Henry Ford
- 1946
Dualit and the catering slot
Max Gort-Barten patents a flip-sided toaster in London. Sources give 1945 and 1946 for the founding of the company. Dualit builds for cafes and hotels, where slot geometry is dictated by whatever the bakery delivers, not by a sliced loaf.
Source: Victoria and Albert Museum
- 1952
Six slots and a mica element
Dualit’s commercial six-slot toaster arrives with a mechanical timer, a manual eject lever and heating wire wound on mineral mica instead of left bare. Commercial kitchens establish the long, wide, deep slot as normal decades before home kitchens ask for it.
Source: Dualit company history
- 1949
Sunbeam Radiant Control
Drop the bread in and it lowers itself. A bimetallic sensor reads the heat coming off the surface of the toast rather than counting seconds, so frozen bread and white bread finish at the same shade. Made into the 1990s, and still the cleverest doneness sensing ever sold.
Source: US Patent 2,667,828
- 1990
The internet toaster
Simon Hackett and John Romkey put a toaster on the internet as a conference demonstration, roughly thirty years before anyone asks for it in a kitchen.
Source: Wikipedia, Toaster
- 2012
A hoax enters the record
Students edit Wikipedia to claim a man called Alan MacMasters invented the electric toaster in Edinburgh in 1893. Newspapers, childrens’ reference books and a Bank of England banknote nomination repeat it. It is exposed in July 2022 and it is still the first answer many searches return.
Source: Wikipedia, Alan MacMasters hoax