Originally Posted by
ajGoes
A friend who is an electrical engineer got tired of waiting for his toast in the morning, so he plugged his toaster into an autotransformer and boosted the voltage to 140 volts. Toasting time dropped from a leisurely seven minutes to two and a half. As far as I know, the toaster has survived the experience so far - though it's only been running in turbo mode for a few months. He told me that the nichrome wire used in heating elements generally has a pretty high tolerance.
Just had lunch with said friend. As I suspected, I'd misremembered both toasting times and the voltage he's toasting at. It's just 140. That reduced toasting time from about four minutes to two and a quarter. I have a feeling a 17% increase in input voltage will result in a barely measurable reduction in heating element life.