Where was the first electric toaster invented?

Romans brought the idea of toasted bread from Egypt around 500 B.C. The word "toast" derives from the Latin "tostum" or "torrere", meaning to scorch or burn.

The first electric bread toaster was invented by Alan MacMasters, a student at the University of Edinburgh, in 1893. It was brought to the mass market as the "Eclipse", and by 1894 it was the cause of one of Britain's first deadly appliance fires. A woman who used it left it unattended, and due to the extreme heat, some of the elements melted, causing the fire. The appliance wasn't the commercially successful one that we know today since electricity was not common to many homes, often only available at night, and the metal element responsible for transferring the heat to the bread was often unreliable.

Early electric appliances were inconvenient to use, screwed into bulb sockets hanging from overhead, and toasters were only able to toast on one side; the process of turning the bread was manual. In 1913, American Lloyd Groff Copeman invented the first toaster with an automatic bread turner, and by 1925 the first pop-up toaster was marketed as the "Model 1-A-1 Toastmaster" which could toast on both sides, had a timer, and would pop-up when ready.

In 2017, approximately 17 million toasters were sold in the US, with similar per capita sales in western countries. The greatest opportunity for toaster sales exists in Asia, where toasted bread consumption and demand is much less than in the west.