That thing looks like “Exhibit A” in a fire department report on “where the fire started”!
That’s what the one I used to have looked like.
Excuse the dumb question, but I don’t know this term. Is it a regionalism or a typo?
Typo. It caught fire.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought it might be a Pittsburghism 
I had always thought “ceramic heater” was a marketing gimmick, and that it meant a resistive wire like nichrome was wrapped around a ceramic form. But I just did some reading on the topic and you’re correct: the heating element is a ceramic-based semiconductor, and it has some interesting and beneficial properties that make it safer vs. traditional electric heaters.
The resistance of a ceramic heating element is initially low. When a constant voltage is applied, the temperature will increase and the resistance will decrease a little bit. But once the temperature of the element reaches the Curie temperature, the resistance increases significantly. Since it is powered with a constant voltage source, this will decrease the current (because I = V/R) and decrease the power (because P = V²/R) to the element. Which, in turn, will decrease the temperature. In other words, negative-feedback. The temperature, current, and power will eventually stabilize to some value due to this negative-feedback loop. And because of this, it’s next to impossible for the element to overheat.
A traditional electric heater with nichrome wire also has a positive temperature coefficient (PTC). But the PTC is not high enough for it to self-regulate. By contrast, the PTC of a ceramic heating element is high enough for self-regulation to occur.
More info, along with R vs T curves, can be found here.
We still have one, but yes, dangerous. Not the least of which is stupid kids putting things up to the hot coils to watch what happens.
Says former stupid kid.
Ceramic heaters typically have screens that also prevent contact with the ceramic element, to further prevent contact.
Mine also has a thermostat with button temp settings. Others use a knob thermostat control.
I had no fear leaving my ceramic heater plugged in and running. Placed with nothing directly in front of the hot air, no risk of a fire. Even something in front of the air probable wouldn’t get hot enough, but no reason to do that.
The coils in newer models run at a lower temperature and in my experience don’t get red-hot. The model you linked to has a plastic housing that would melt from the radiant heat if it got that hot. I’m sure the forced convection helps as well and that it has a safety feature that requires the fan to run.
The temperature of the wire (for a given power) is a function of its length (which determines the cross-section). Double the length and the cross-section and there’s half the power per unit length, which brings down the temperature.
Unlike an incandescent light bulb, this doesn’t affect efficiency at all; it just needs more wire. And I expect that the cost of nichrome has gone down over time so that we can have cheap heaters with much longer wire paths.
Yes, we have one of those, and it’s not nearly the same as the model shown in post 10.
Those wires don’t glow when you run them, and they are enclosed in safety screens that severely limit access.
The old-fashioned type like above, the cage to keep things out is much wider openings, that fingers and even little hands can get into. They are a lot closer to an open fireplace - much safer than a gas-burner, but still risky.
And as I said, tempting to stick things in to watch them burn.
I melted the hair on one of my sister’s dolls on one. I doubt those new models could do that.