Retired mechanical engineer Peter Browne and airline pilot Mervyn Huggett, also retired, reportedly spent over 1,000 hours building a machine to make breakfast for their respective wives on Sunday mornings. “The electronics are quite complex” we hear in the video, which sadly for Elektor e-zine readers does not disclose further details on microcontrollers, interfacing, servos, motor drivers, or programming applied to make the contraption work in a predictable way and please Mrs Huggett and Mrs Browne, again on Sunday mornings only.

In addition to brewing a lovely cup of English tea (or instant coffee if you'd rather) the machine also hands you the morning paper, soft-boils an egg, toasts some toast, and clears up afterwards, if that’s a proper way of describing the dishes being dumped off the side of the table. I also worried ever so slightly about the use of a NEVER READY battery but overall the demo caught on video is a great success and all that’s left for these  gentlemen inventors to do is get the contraption out of their workshop and into the kitchen.