90% Have No Idea What This Is. Do You? The Story of the Copeman Turnover Toaster

Look at the image above. It’s a strange-looking contraption—a wire cage mounted on a metal base, with a label that reads “TURNOVER TOASTER” and “COPEMAN PATENTS.” If you’re among the 90% who have no idea what this is, you’re not alone. But this humble appliance is a genuine piece of history: it’s one of the earliest automatic toasters ever made, and it revolutionized the way people ate breakfast.

What Is This Antique Appliance?

This is a Copeman Turnover Toaster, manufactured by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company around 1917-1918. It is an early electric toaster that was designed to automatically flip a slice of bread so that both sides could be toasted without the user having to manually turn it.

The manufacturer’s plate on the front reads: “TURNOVER TOASTER / COPEMAN PATENTS / W / WESTINGHOUSE / ELECTRIC”. The device is made of metal, with a nickel-plated finish and Bakelite components. It stands about 7 inches tall and features a distinctive teardrop cutout design on top and a wire cage on the sides.

How Did It Work?

The genius of the Copeman Turnover Toaster lay in its innovative mechanism. During the early 1900s, electric toasters were a recent invention. The first commercially successful version was patented in July 1909, but these early models had a major drawback: the bread had to be manually turned over halfway through toasting to ensure both sides were cooked evenly.

The Copeman Turnover Toaster solved this problem. As described by the Maine Memory Network, the Westinghouse Turn-Over Toaster was “an innovation that helped prevent burned fingers by flipping the slice of toast end-over-end when the doors of the toaster were opened”.

The user would place a slice of bread into the wire cage. When the doors were opened, the mechanism would flip the toast end-over-end, presenting the untoasted side to the heating element. This eliminated the need for manual turning and reduced the risk of burns. The toaster sits on a rectangular base with a two-prong outlet for a power cord.

The Inventor Behind the Innovation

The Copeman Turnover Toaster was the brainchild of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific American inventor who devised the first electric stove and the flexible rubber ice cube tray, among other products. He had nearly 700 patents to his name.

The idea for the automatic toaster came from an unexpected source: Copeman’s wife, Hazel. As the story goes, Hazel Berger Copeman gave her husband the idea for a toaster that would turn the bread without manual intervention. In 1914, a patent for what Copeman called the Automatic Toaster was filed in Hazel’s name.

From 1913, Copeman’s toaster with bread turner was produced by the Copeman Electric Stove Company, which he had founded in Flint, Michigan, in 1912. In 1917, he sold the Copeman Electric Stove Company to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Mansfield, Ohio. Westinghouse continued to produce the toaster under the Copeman patents, which is why the appliance in the image bears both names.

Why This Toaster Matters

The Copeman Turnover Toaster represents a pivotal moment in the history of domestic technology. Before its invention, making toast was a manual, often dangerous task. Early electric toasters required constant attention, and it was easy to burn your fingers when flipping the bread.

The Copeman Turnover Toaster was one of the first appliances to automate this process. It was a small but significant step toward the fully automated kitchens we take for granted today. The invention of the pop-up toaster in 1926 eventually superseded Copeman’s innovations, but his turnover mechanism paved the way for the convenient toasters we use today.

Collecting Copeman Turnover Toasters

Today, the Copeman Turnover Toaster is a highly sought-after collectible. Examples are held in the collections of the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, The Henry Ford museum, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

Collectors value these early toasters not just for their historical significance, but for their striking industrial design. The exposed heating elements, the intricate wire cages, and the polished metal finishes make them beautiful examples of early 20th-century engineering. Collectors will pay a lot of “dough” for these antique toasters, as one CBS News report put it.

The Bottom Line

So, did you know what this was? If not, you’re in good company. The Copeman Turnover Toaster is a forgotten relic of a bygone era—a time when even the simple act of making toast was a marvel of modern technology. Next time you pop a slice of bread into your toaster, take a moment to appreciate the ingenuity of Lloyd Groff Copeman and his wife Hazel, whose invention made breakfast a little bit easier for everyone.