Posted April 9 2008
The Geek Guide to Kosher Machines
I just stumbled on a Wired article from November of 2004 which profiles Jonah Ottensoser, an engineer for the Star-K. “A retired helicopter engineer who is himself Orthodox, Ottensoser teaches Sabbath law to technical teams at companies like General Electric, Electrolux, and Viking. His job: to guide them in building electronic brains and mechanical guts that are Sabbath-compliant.”
The article does a relatively good job of summarizing hilchot Shabbat, even going so far as to explain the concept of melachot. It is rare to see an article focusing on this, what I consider to be an absolutely fascinating and ever-expanding field. As technology becomes more and more ingrained in the things we use each day, we will need many more people working on these systems.
Usually, these systems are not technically challenging to build. It just takes someone who truly understands both the halachot and the engineering of the device in question to produce an appliance with a built-in mode that will allow you to use it on Shabbat.
Star-K article on appliance Shabbat mode by Jonah Ottensoser
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The Wolf ovens have a sabbath mode on their warming drawers, as well as an incredibly cool feature on the oven part where hitting a button turns the entire control panel over, turning it under metal and hiding the buttons (really cool!).