Magnetron

The year was 1946. World War II had just ended and creative geniuses were working still to create new things that could be used if tensions between countries heated up again. Self-taught engineer, Dr. Perry Spencer, was an employee with Raytheon Corporation. Raytheon Corporation was and still is a major US defense contractor and industrial corporation (Communications). Dr. Spencer and colleagues were testing out a new wartime invention, the magnetron. The magnetron was originally created in order to generate microwave signals from direct current electricity, through a vacuum tube (“Cavity Magnetron”).
While experimenting with this powerful tube, Dr. Spencer realized that the chocolate bar that he had placed in his pocket had been completely melted. This realization inspired an idea and Dr. Spencer begun to run more experiments to see if he could attempt to make the same thing happen once again. Instead of using chocolate, he experimented with popcorn kernels. Placing several popcorn
However, they were very different from those we have today. The first microwave oven was around 5 ½ feet tall and weighed over 700 pounds. They were enormous not only in size, but also in price, costing thousands of dollars a unit (Sharpe). Like most other new inventions, the public was very reluctant to trust this new piece of kitchen equipment. After a few years and a couple tune ups, the public came to love the new ease of heating up food in the matter of seconds. Prices began to lower as smaller microwaves made for household were created, which appealed to an even bigger clientele. Today, roughly 90% of American households own a microwave (Ferdman). Dr. Spencer was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999, several years after he passed away (Sharpe). He will always be known as an imaginative and innovative man, creating one of the most commonly used kitchen