Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And when are people going to be listening
Speaker 1: to this? Thanksgiving hasn't happened yet, right, so you're not
Speaker 1: heating up leftovers for a week heating up leftovers, Joe. No,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that people will be inspired by this look
Speaker 1: at the microwave and they will cook their entire turkey
Speaker 1: in there. That is a horrible idea. I don't do it.
Speaker 1: I was just looking it up and there you can
Speaker 1: find some uh semi convincing recipes online for how to
Speaker 1: cook your entire Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave oven, in
Speaker 1: a dirty microwave with a little splatter stains, a nice
Speaker 1: clean microwave for a just a wonderful Thanksgiving. Does butter
Speaker 1: Ball sell a turkey that comes with its own hot
Speaker 1: pocket style sleeve to crisp up the exterior? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. But yes, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about the microwave oven here on Invention. And the
Speaker 1: whole reason that we're launching this in November is because, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a month that is typically associated with food
Speaker 1: and feasts, and so we've been looking at some food
Speaker 1: based innovations, and really the microwave is is one of
Speaker 1: the big ones, uh, in terms of inventions that have
Speaker 1: come along in the you know, the last hundred years
Speaker 1: and have just changed the way that we think about
Speaker 1: the household kitchen totally. Uh. Now, Robert, you mentioned there
Speaker 1: are many common mishaps that happened with the microwave, and
Speaker 1: and one of the ones I identify with the most
Speaker 1: is forgetting that I can't just put a stick of
Speaker 1: butter in the microwave and a container to melt the butter.
Speaker 1: This happens about once a year where I need, like
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm making pancakes for house guests or something something
Speaker 1: I don't do very often. I'm like, I'll just melt
Speaker 1: the butter in the microwave. I think maybe it's happened
Speaker 1: for the last time because I'm talking about it out
Speaker 1: loud now, But every time it explodes inside the microwave
Speaker 1: and I got to clean up butter everywhere for ten
Speaker 1: minutes or however long. Yeah, the stick of butter explosion
Speaker 1: is is is something that's very hard to miss. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know the sound when you hear it, and then
Speaker 1: you think, oh crap, I I did it again. I'm
Speaker 1: I have a pretty good system for the times I
Speaker 1: need to have melted butter for making pancakes or pop
Speaker 1: popovers or something. And I'll take the butter and then
Speaker 1: I'll slice it up into smaller pieces, and then I'll
Speaker 1: microwave those small pieces of butter in a bowl with
Speaker 1: a cover for her, you know, ten fifteen seconds something
Speaker 1: like that, and if they need more, I'll give him
Speaker 1: another blast. But sometimes I get a little cocky and
Speaker 1: I either forget to cover it, or I don't cut
Speaker 1: it up as much or give it a little too
Speaker 1: much time, and then once more, unexplosion, everything is covered
Speaker 1: in butter. And of course there are some other mishaps
Speaker 1: that occur from time to time. We've all attempted to
Speaker 1: reheat some leftovers or cook a microwave meal, and part
Speaker 1: of it will be super hot and part of it
Speaker 1: will be almost ice cold. Also, gold leaf, say on
Speaker 1: your grandmother's fine china, will turn blue in the microwave oven.
Speaker 1: And then of course we've all either burnt popcorn or
Speaker 1: cremated a fish stick or something like that. While attempting
Speaker 1: to heat something up in the microwave. Generally this is
Speaker 1: user air. But but I think the big take home
Speaker 1: here is that these are the times when the microwave
Speaker 1: oven disappoints us and we take a few moments to
Speaker 1: gripe about our microwave oven. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: the microwave oven works exceedingly well at the things that
Speaker 1: it's good at. It works so well that it is
Speaker 1: just a part. It's a part of our kitchen, something
Speaker 1: we just completely take for granted, being able to reheat
Speaker 1: foods that we cooked the night before, to cook microwave dinners,
Speaker 1: or certainly, you know, if you're making pancakes or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and you're not getting too cocky with your butter away
Speaker 1: to heat something that is going to be utilized in
Speaker 1: a recipe for something else that may involve your conventional
Speaker 1: or you know, your gas oven, etcetera. Right, I am.
Speaker 1: I cook a lot in the house, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: can be kind of snobby about the way certain foods
Speaker 1: are prepared. So you might think, well, then you don't
Speaker 1: use the microwave much, But no, I use the microwave
Speaker 1: all the time, and there's tons of stuff that's perfectly
Speaker 1: good for. I would not recommend cooking your Thanksgiving turkey
Speaker 1: in the microwave. It's uh, it's probably not going to
Speaker 1: work out very well. The outside is not gonna look
Speaker 1: very appetizing, It'll end up extremely dry, and you're not
Speaker 1: going to get very much browning or whatever on the skin.
Speaker 1: Has to do with the way the microwave cooks things
Speaker 1: that it's not good for. Stuff like that. It's not
Speaker 1: good for like big meat roasts and stuff. But for say, uh,
Speaker 1: thawing out frozen liquid based things. You know you've got
Speaker 1: frozen stock or soup or something like that, it's fantastic, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly popcorn is a great example. You need to microwave popcorn.
Speaker 1: There's no better way heat up a little water, et cetera. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to heating up water, though, there there's
Speaker 1: another thing where there can be dangerous associated with with
Speaker 1: the way that it heats up food. Like uh, in
Speaker 1: certain water containers, you can sometimes get the splash up,
Speaker 1: you know, the rapid boil when you dip a spoon
Speaker 1: into water that you've heated up in the microwave. If
Speaker 1: there are no nucleation points in the water as it
Speaker 1: heats up for bubbles to form, so it can gets
Speaker 1: kind of superheated but without boiling. Uh So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a little thing you might have often seen people like
Speaker 1: putting a little coffee stir or stick or something is
Speaker 1: some kind of non metal spoon into water as they
Speaker 1: heat it up, and that's just to help create nucleation
Speaker 1: points for bubbles to form so that the water can
Speaker 1: boil properly while it's being heated. Interesting, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: take our typical approach here to an invention then, in
Speaker 1: this case, it's the invention of the microwave oven. Before
Speaker 1: we can really appreciate what the microwave oven changes, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about what came before. And you know,
Speaker 1: given that this is a twentieth century invention, a lot
Speaker 1: came before. Everything else in human culinary history came before.
Speaker 1: And obviously that means many different forms of oven came first,
Speaker 1: earth ovens, ceramic ovens, gas ovens, masonry ovens, toaster ovens,
Speaker 1: steam ovens, convection ovens, rotary ovens. At heart, an oven
Speaker 1: of any sort is just simply quote, a chamber used
Speaker 1: for baking, heating, or drying. That's you're just standard Webster's
Speaker 1: definition there, and most of these utilized fire or an
Speaker 1: electric heating element, you know, something that will heat the
Speaker 1: chamber and therefore heat the food. Connecting to a recent episode,
Speaker 1: I wonder if anybody ever made a setup where you
Speaker 1: had a turnspit dog to rotate the plate inside the
Speaker 1: microave as it goes around. Well, you gotta rotate that
Speaker 1: plate one way or another. But the microwave oven the
Speaker 1: main way it's different. Uh, you know, regardless of how
Speaker 1: neat that little rotating tray happens to be, the main
Speaker 1: reason it's different is because it heats food by exposing
Speaker 1: the food to electro magnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range.
Speaker 1: That's right now, we're gonna be talking a good bit
Speaker 1: in these microwave episodes about anti microwave panic. You know,
Speaker 1: the terror some people feel at the idea of a
Speaker 1: microwave or radiating their food like it's a nuclear test
Speaker 1: site in your kitchen. You shouldn't let the word radiat
Speaker 1: shan their contribute to this kind of anti microwave panic. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most radiation, of course, is harmless to you. The light
Speaker 1: coming out of your desk lamp is radiation, and so
Speaker 1: in this vein to further demystify the magic of the
Speaker 1: microwave cooking box, I think it might be worth a
Speaker 1: very quick detour to explain a bit of the underlying
Speaker 1: physics here as simply as possible. So, electromagnetic radiation is
Speaker 1: the same type of radiation as radio waves, infrared and
Speaker 1: visible light UV radiation, X rays, and gamma rays. It's
Speaker 1: all the same stuff. It's all photons. What varies to
Speaker 1: make the difference between all of these is the frequency,
Speaker 1: meaning how fast the waves cycle or oscillate, which can
Speaker 1: also be expressed. The same thing can be expressed in
Speaker 1: terms of wave length. Faster oscillating waves are shorter, Slower
Speaker 1: oscillating waves are longer, and despite the name, microwaves are
Speaker 1: actually relatively long low frequency waves. They're called micro waves
Speaker 1: because their wavelength is short compared to radio waves, but
Speaker 1: microwaves are long compared to pretty much everything else. And
Speaker 1: even that appellation sort of it helps place them in
Speaker 1: a historical context, right because when you when you see
Speaker 1: microwave consciousness emerging among physicists, it's sort of like as
Speaker 1: another part of what is generally thought of as the
Speaker 1: radio frequency. Now the really dangerous types of radiation we
Speaker 1: think of like X rays and gamma rays, the kinds
Speaker 1: that cause cancer and radiation poisoning and such. These have
Speaker 1: much shorter wavelengths and faster oscillations. Electromagnetic radiation in the
Speaker 1: microwave range actually has a lower frequency than visible light
Speaker 1: that we see with our eyes. Microwaves are defined as
Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves at a frequency greater than three hundred megaherts,
Speaker 1: which is three hundred million waves per second, and less
Speaker 1: than three hundred giga hurts, which is three hundred billion
Speaker 1: waves per second. Uh. And this equates two wavelengths between
Speaker 1: about one meter and one millimeter. So when you're trying
Speaker 1: to pick sure in microwaves, of course they're invisible, but
Speaker 1: you can think of them as waves that are basically
Speaker 1: on the human scale. You could measure them with a
Speaker 1: ruler or a tape measure. Yeah, I've frequently seen them
Speaker 1: described as being about the length of a of a toothbrush.
Speaker 1: That's certainly within there. Yeah, between the meter and millimeter scale.
Speaker 1: I mean, almost everything that's understand that not understandable, but
Speaker 1: everything that's you know, reasonable to measure with your arms
Speaker 1: or hands is sort of in the microwave scale. So
Speaker 1: how does a microwave oven generate microwaves. Well, it's through
Speaker 1: the use of this all important electrical device called a magnetron. Really,
Speaker 1: the main thing that operates your microwave oven is a
Speaker 1: little device that you can hold in your hand. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to go into super deep detail
Speaker 1: about everything about all the inner workings of the magnetron.
Speaker 1: It's especially hard to do without visual aids, but I'll
Speaker 1: try to give you the simple version. So, a magnetron
Speaker 1: is a device for turning electric current like you get
Speaker 1: out of the wall socket into microwave rate ation. And
Speaker 1: it consists of a vacuum tube made out of a metal,
Speaker 1: often something like copper, with a conductive filament in the
Speaker 1: middle of that tube. And then you'll have large permanent magnets,
Speaker 1: usually doughnut shaped, on each end of the tube. And
Speaker 1: as voltage is applied to the filament that runs through
Speaker 1: the middle of this vacuum tube, the filament the currents
Speaker 1: running through it and it gets incredibly hot, and then
Speaker 1: electrons start to fly off of this negatively charged hot
Speaker 1: filament toward the walls of the positively charged tube and
Speaker 1: there's so there's an electric field in the vacuum in
Speaker 1: between this filament in the middle of the tube and
Speaker 1: the walls of the tube. But the magnets at each
Speaker 1: end of the tube help shape that flow of electrons
Speaker 1: through that vacuum in something kind of like a spiral
Speaker 1: or pinwheel shape. And then meanwhile, the metal inner surface
Speaker 1: of the tube contains little pockets or cavities, and it's
Speaker 1: these cavities that are so important in creating the microwaves.
Speaker 1: The spiraling flow of electrons from the through the vacuum
Speaker 1: tube rapidly passes over the mouths of those cavities, and
Speaker 1: it results in vibration of electrons that creates the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation in the microwave spectrum. Uh. So this is how
Speaker 1: the waves are created. They're they're emitted by these electrons
Speaker 1: as they're like changing energy states. Uh. These microwaves are
Speaker 1: projected off the end of an antenna and guided into
Speaker 1: the metal lined inter cage of the oven, where they
Speaker 1: reflect around. They bounce around inside this and they heat
Speaker 1: the food up. So we've got electromagnetic waves bouncing around,
Speaker 1: But how does that actually cook the food. The answer
Speaker 1: is that almost all foods contain polar molecules. Primarily water molecules,
Speaker 1: and what that means is that ht H two O
Speaker 1: is slightly positively charged at one end and slightly negatively
Speaker 1: charged at the other end. And so as these microwaves
Speaker 1: passed by these water molecules, these polar molecules, the molecules
Speaker 1: try to rotate to align their poles with the direction
Speaker 1: of the electric field produced by each wave. But being waves,
Speaker 1: of course, they are rapidly oscillating the direction of that
Speaker 1: field back and forth. At two point four gigaherts. These
Speaker 1: microwaves passed by billions of times per second, and so
Speaker 1: the rapid rotating back and forth of the water molecules
Speaker 1: sort of jostles them all around. As they get jostled
Speaker 1: around trying to align themselves with this rapidly alternating field.
Speaker 1: This manifests is heat. Rapid vibration of molecules, of course,
Speaker 1: is heat. Now we should note that some varieties of
Speaker 1: microwave oven may introduce additional heating sources, but what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here is the standard microwave oven. Are there
Speaker 1: like microwaves that have fires inside would be great? Um, well,
Speaker 1: they are microwaves that basically involve a heating element and addition, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but this is the standard. No gas, no
Speaker 1: heating element, no fire, just invisible waves agitating water molecules
Speaker 1: causing them to vibrate rapidly producing heat. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is why most containers don't you know, microwave safe containers
Speaker 1: don't heat up at least, you know, they don't heat
Speaker 1: up due to the microwave itself. The food itself may
Speaker 1: heat up the dish, etcetera. But the oven does this rapidly.
Speaker 1: The oven also does this without requiring any sort of preheating.
Speaker 1: And it's not going to warm up your kitchen on
Speaker 1: a hot day, or at least not like a four
Speaker 1: and fifty degree oven will. I mean, it's the basic
Speaker 1: electronic device will heat your room a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the standard oven you've got to think about.
Speaker 1: This has to work by heating up the air inside it.
Speaker 1: In a microwave, that doesn't matter. In fact, the air
Speaker 1: inside a microwave doesn't even get hot except in whatever
Speaker 1: way it's like exposed to steam and stuff. Right. And uh,
Speaker 1: and also we'll come back to this again. You already
Speaker 1: touched on a little bit. But the cooking chamber itself
Speaker 1: is surrounded by something like a Faraday cage to prevent
Speaker 1: the microwaves from escaping. They're bouncing around in there. They
Speaker 1: can't get out. Even in the viewing panel, as everyone's
Speaker 1: probably noticed, is covered with a mesh that allows light
Speaker 1: to pass through, but not the microwaves. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: very important. So you can look through because visible light
Speaker 1: is small enough of a wavelength to penetrate that mesh,
Speaker 1: but the microwaves are too long to penetrate the mesh.
Speaker 1: They're stuck inside. And now there might be in modern
Speaker 1: microwaves a tiny amount of microwave leakage. This is the
Speaker 1: thing that's been we'll talk about this more, probably in
Speaker 1: the next episode, but there have been concerns throughout the
Speaker 1: history of microwave design about how much microwaves can leak
Speaker 1: out of the oven. Modern microwaves are generally very safe.
Speaker 1: They keep almost entirely contained. That which leaks out is
Speaker 1: not enough to cook too much. So that's the microwave
Speaker 1: oven in a nutshell. The next step is going to
Speaker 1: be for us to look at the inventor of the
Speaker 1: microwave oven. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll
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Speaker 1: slash invention that's I N V E N T I
Speaker 1: O in or text invention to five hundred five hundred.
Speaker 1: You know, Robert, I just downloaded Doctor Sleep to listen
Speaker 1: to on Audible. I'm very excited to get into that.
Speaker 1: Nice choice for some new Stephen King. Yeah, last year,
Speaker 1: I think around this time I listened to The Stand
Speaker 1: the long version on Audible and it was it was
Speaker 1: like something like fifty hours, but it was great. Now,
Speaker 1: I always really enjoy revisiting the works of Karl Sagan,
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Speaker 1: five hundred five hundred. That's five zero zero dash five
Speaker 1: zero zero and we're back. So it's time to talk
Speaker 1: about the inventor of the microwave. That's right, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Percy Spencer, who lived eight through nineteen seventy. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is one of those you know, we we often
Speaker 1: find these interesting stories, human stories of the inventors that
Speaker 1: are wrapped up in these inventions, and this is certainly
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting tales, interesting origin stories of
Speaker 1: an inventor. Uh. So, basically a rags to rich's tail.
Speaker 1: So he had a really rough early life. Uh. Percy
Speaker 1: lost his father eighteen months after his birth, was raised
Speaker 1: by his uncle and aunt, and then his uncle died
Speaker 1: when he was seven, and he had to quit grammar
Speaker 1: school to earned money to help support himself and his aunt.
Speaker 1: He worked at a spool mill from age twelve through sixteen,
Speaker 1: but he showed an early knack for electrical work, so
Speaker 1: he joined the navy at age eighteen and got into
Speaker 1: wireless communication, namely radio. He taught himself numerous mathematical and
Speaker 1: scientific subjects just you know, consuming the books on his own,
Speaker 1: so he was largely self taught. Um. And then he
Speaker 1: ends up joining the Raytheon Company in nine Now If
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Raytheon company, you you're probably thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is the enormous uh like defense contractor
Speaker 1: and you know, an industrial company, uh, you know, major player.
Speaker 1: But at the time when when when Spencer joined Raytheon,
Speaker 1: he became its fifth employee. Wow, so he really got
Speaker 1: in on the ground floor here. But this would have
Speaker 1: been a time when if you were working in uh
Speaker 1: in like wireless communication, this was cutting edge stuff and
Speaker 1: that would have been highly relevant, not just wireless communication,
Speaker 1: but like electromagnetic imaging and stuff would have been extremely
Speaker 1: valuable to say international war efforts in national defense, that's right,
Speaker 1: and and that was a lot of the work that
Speaker 1: was going on with Raytheon at the time. UM he
Speaker 1: was extremely successful within the company. He helped develop the
Speaker 1: first gaseous rectifier two, which was essential for household radio technology,
Speaker 1: and over the course of his career he came to
Speaker 1: hold more than a hundred and thirty patents, including patents
Speaker 1: for the application of microwave energy to medical uh diathermy,
Speaker 1: which is the production of heat and a part of
Speaker 1: the body to stimulate to circulation, relief pain, destroy unhealthy tissue,
Speaker 1: or to clock bleeding vessels. And during this time, Raytheon
Speaker 1: grew enormously as well, uh, you know, becoming the the
Speaker 1: major US defense contractor that we know today. Um, but
Speaker 1: you can, you can. You can look up a lot
Speaker 1: of his patents, a lot of Spencer's patents, and uh
Speaker 1: they were up you know, for a variety of highly
Speaker 1: technical things such as electrical space discharge device or high
Speaker 1: efficiency magnetron, the magnetron we mentioned already, uh, as well
Speaker 1: as the likes of For instance, he obtained a two
Speaker 1: patent for an improved automobile cigarette lighter, UH, one that
Speaker 1: indicates by touch when the element will be hot enough
Speaker 1: to light something. Here's a quote from it. An object
Speaker 1: of this invention, therefore, is to produce a cigarette lighter
Speaker 1: which will give the operator a TecTile indication at the
Speaker 1: time when the igniting element of the lighter reaches its
Speaker 1: proper temperature. And this could have saved me some pain
Speaker 1: in the past. While I was telling you earlier today
Speaker 1: about a time when years ago, I was like twenty
Speaker 1: years old or something, and I was just sitting in
Speaker 1: my car waiting somewhere one time, and I'd never really
Speaker 1: used the cigarette lighter in my car. I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it works, does it get hot? Because
Speaker 1: my car was old. So I pressed it in and
Speaker 1: then I pulled it out and I was like, is
Speaker 1: it hot? It doesn't look hot, and I pressed my
Speaker 1: thumb to it to find out. And that was a
Speaker 1: bad day. Well see if that, if this invention had
Speaker 1: really taken off, and he could have saved you some time. Uh,
Speaker 1: But Spencer is best known for his invention for Raytheon
Speaker 1: of the microwave oven um, and most of these patents
Speaker 1: that you can look at, you can see that they
Speaker 1: are there. You know, they're filed through, filed by Raytheon
Speaker 1: with his name on it. Now you might be asking,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why would Raytheon be concerned with coming
Speaker 1: up with a new method for cooking food? Right? That
Speaker 1: doesn't really seem to fit within their their niche, right.
Speaker 1: But in fact, they were not looking for a new
Speaker 1: way to create food, right. They were they were looking
Speaker 1: into the communication aspects of of of these waves and
Speaker 1: the microwaves. And the story goes that Spencer was working
Speaker 1: in the lab on a radar set and he noticed
Speaker 1: that the candy bar in his pocket had melted, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, others had observed this sort of thing in
Speaker 1: the past already. He was not the first individual to
Speaker 1: notice that microwaves could, say, melt food or heat up food,
Speaker 1: or heat up you know, some sort of organic material.
Speaker 1: But he was the first to investigate the matter, and
Speaker 1: he ended up experimenting with different foods, including popcorn, including eggs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read that there was a story where he made
Speaker 1: an egg explode on somebody's face. Microwaves, um, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll by exposing them to the magnetron. And then he
Speaker 1: built the first microwave oven of sorts by by enclosing
Speaker 1: all of this within a metal box and testing various
Speaker 1: foods inside of it. I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: just don't have a strong gut feeling that Spencer was
Speaker 1: a good cook. Well man, maybe not. You know that
Speaker 1: the whole story of the microwaves will continue to explore
Speaker 1: is this kind of struggle with what it should be
Speaker 1: used for. But but well, we'll get back to that
Speaker 1: later on. So ray Beon filed a patent for the
Speaker 1: microwave cooking process on October eight n and the Radar
Speaker 1: Range hit the market in nineteen six. I love that name,
Speaker 1: the Radar Range. What if we still called it that
Speaker 1: people would love it more it Uh yeah, they might,
Speaker 1: they might, you know, Uh, it's but this thing was
Speaker 1: a monster. This thing looked like a robot out of
Speaker 1: out of a science fiction film from the period. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a six ft seven and fifty pound beast
Speaker 1: of an appliance. But this was just the beginning. This
Speaker 1: was just a true, you know, glimpse at the kitchen
Speaker 1: of the future. But can you imagine a person at
Speaker 1: the time when this very first is a consumer option, thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got ruined my kitchen for a regular oven or
Speaker 1: a microwave oven. Which one do I want? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I think that's another issue here too, is this idea
Speaker 1: that the microwave oven is going to somehow replace conventional ovens,
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna need a gas oven or a
Speaker 1: or you know, a heating element oven. But we'll get
Speaker 1: into all that in a bit. Obviously, this monster did
Speaker 1: not catch catch on right away. Uh. If you weren't
Speaker 1: scared away by the idea of cooking food with radiation
Speaker 1: in X, then certainly the five thousand dollar price tag
Speaker 1: probably did the trick. This would have been equal to
Speaker 1: to about fifty thousand if today's dollars, according to APS News,
Speaker 1: but they continued, of course, to make improvements. This was
Speaker 1: just the first model. The first countertop home model went
Speaker 1: on sale in the nineteen fifties for four and by
Speaker 1: roughly nine of US households owned a microwave oven. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the legacy of the microwave oven
Speaker 1: in our second episode on the invention. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: funny contrast actually to this behemoth you've gotten in the
Speaker 1: early years, because I think it's exactly the size and
Speaker 1: portability of a microwave that makes it useful in a
Speaker 1: lot of places where you wouldn't even have a regular stove.
Speaker 1: These days, I think the dorm rooms. Dorm rooms are
Speaker 1: a big one. Yeah, not only the size and the
Speaker 1: mobility of the microwave oven, but the degree to which
Speaker 1: you can trust it's safety with college students, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was in a dorm, you know,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of regulations about you can't have candles,
Speaker 1: can have incense, or all these things you cannot have
Speaker 1: because they're potentially dangerous to you or the entire building.
Speaker 1: But the microwave oven is safe now. Spencer continued to
Speaker 1: be involved in the evolution of the design and and
Speaker 1: and its usages as well. Uh. Consider his nine patent
Speaker 1: application which is granted in nineteen fifty one for a
Speaker 1: microwave oven cooking method. Uh. And this is the wonderful
Speaker 1: intro quote. This invention relates to food cooking, and more
Speaker 1: particularly to the cooking of lobsters and thick bodies of
Speaker 1: meat by the use of electromagnetic wave energy. It's gonna
Speaker 1: get lobsters in their right at the top. Is he
Speaker 1: trying to sell it as like a luxe fancy item
Speaker 1: that way, or I mean basically, it is a patent
Speaker 1: about an improved method for cooking lobsters in a microwave oven. H.
Speaker 1: It includes an illustration of the oven with a whole
Speaker 1: lobster in it. Um and Uh, yeah it is. It
Speaker 1: is all about out lobsters. For instance. There's there's some
Speaker 1: more quotes from it. Quote. A further object is to
Speaker 1: devise a novel method for broiling lobsters a steal. Further
Speaker 1: object is to devise a method for preventing curling of
Speaker 1: the tail sections of lobsters during broiling, thereof thereby to
Speaker 1: maintain such lobsters substantially constant and thickness during such broiling
Speaker 1: and quote, an additional object is to devise a method
Speaker 1: which will prevent curling of the tail sections of lobsters
Speaker 1: during broiling and will at the same time cause more
Speaker 1: effective coupling of the heat energy into the interior of
Speaker 1: the tail sections of such lobsters. So much thought about
Speaker 1: the tail sections. Yeah, and I want to be clear
Speaker 1: about the spencer was talking about microwaving live lobsters. Quote.
Speaker 1: It has been found that an electronic oven such as
Speaker 1: that described may be utilized for the broiling of live lobsters,
Speaker 1: and that when it is done, lobsters may be broiled
Speaker 1: in an extremely short time interval on the order of
Speaker 1: two minutes, as compared with the approximately eighteen minutes required
Speaker 1: by convention broiling techniques. Uh, you know, it's that he's
Speaker 1: just making, you know, the argument, you want to broil
Speaker 1: some lobsters for dinner, do you want to do it
Speaker 1: in eighteen minutes or do you want to want to
Speaker 1: do it in two minutes? But the main problem that
Speaker 1: he's dealing with in this pattern relates to to a
Speaker 1: means of preventing the lobster's tail from curling up underneath
Speaker 1: its body. During the microwave and process, as this artificially
Speaker 1: shields part of the lobster's body during the cooking process.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I know as a
Speaker 1: cook is exactly the kind of seizing up that causes
Speaker 1: like tight curling of of like a shrimp or a
Speaker 1: lobster tail or something like that. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: when you see like a piece of chickens seizing up
Speaker 1: or something, it's usually a pretty good sign that some
Speaker 1: some dryness is taking place. And yeah, I guess that's
Speaker 1: what he's trying to prevent here. And I don't know
Speaker 1: why this horrifies me so much, though, that the the
Speaker 1: idea of cooking a live lobster in a microwave. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's the Grimlin's uh tie in, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: doing like a live gremlin in there. But but it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous because certainly the cooking of laws inherently involves the
Speaker 1: cooking of live lobsters. And perhaps, you know, perhaps perhaps
Speaker 1: part of this is like this weird sort of background
Speaker 1: bias against the microwave, uh, you know, you know, or
Speaker 1: or that's a sort of background myth making that we
Speaker 1: we engage, uh. And when we think about the microwave,
Speaker 1: but we'll come back to that later. But what this
Speaker 1: says to me is that once he's invented this uh,
Speaker 1: Percy spencer is sort of in the microwave zone. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's in the radar range zone. And he's just working
Speaker 1: the zone for a while, right, Like he's figuring out,
Speaker 1: here's every different kind of microwave thing I can do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For instance, he obtained a patent in for a microwave
Speaker 1: coffee brewing pot. And note this is not a coffee
Speaker 1: pot that goes into a microwave o. And this is
Speaker 1: a coffee pot that contains a magnetron that contains a
Speaker 1: microwave component to heat the water. It's so funny because
Speaker 1: part of what we're doing in these episodes is trying
Speaker 1: to dispel unfounded microwave fears. And yet my reaction to
Speaker 1: this at a gut level is that's wrong. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: on one level, it's also certain certainly something we're not
Speaker 1: used to, like we're used to we have the microwave there, uh,
Speaker 1: and if we heat the water for coffee in the microwave,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, sure, But the yeah, the idea of
Speaker 1: having the magnetron in the coffee, but itself seems strange.
Speaker 1: In fact, I could totally do that. I mean at home,
Speaker 1: I I usually do pour over coffee. Uh, and yeah,
Speaker 1: why not heat the water up in the microwave? I
Speaker 1: usually do on the stovetop. But maybe the microwave is
Speaker 1: more efficient. I should look into that. All right. On
Speaker 1: that note, we're gonna take one more break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back we will begin getting into the legacy
Speaker 1: of the microwave. Alright, we're back, so it's time to
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the the legacy of the microwave oven.
Speaker 1: We know that that Percy Spencer has been moving around
Speaker 1: in the microwave zone for a while. He's been working
Speaker 1: the radar range to broil lobsters to make coffee. But so,
Speaker 1: how does the microwave oven take off? How is it
Speaker 1: first received, and what happens with the Raytheon company. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously we already touched on the fact that it initially
Speaker 1: comes out and the technology is large and expensive, and
Speaker 1: from there it's about you know, engineering it and getting
Speaker 1: it smaller, getting it more affordable, uh, you know, scaling
Speaker 1: up production, getting it out there. But but also you
Speaker 1: have to there's a certain amount of marketing that has
Speaker 1: to take place as well. Uh. But then also you
Speaker 1: have to come back to the fact that Raytheon, of
Speaker 1: course was originally not an appliance company. So what they
Speaker 1: did is they acquired a Manner Refrigeration and then in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, the Raytheon acquired a Manner refrigeration company,
Speaker 1: developed the first microwave that sold for under five hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which I believe we alluded to that one earlier. So
Speaker 1: this was suddenly you had a microwave that you could
Speaker 1: normal people could conceivably purchase and put in their home. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is this is I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but notice sixty seven two, this is such an interesting
Speaker 1: year for change in American culture. You know, it's the
Speaker 1: Summer of love. Um. The Mogue synthesizer, uh was you know,
Speaker 1: introduced its first production model, and then here's the microwave
Speaker 1: as well coming along. You might say that a Mogue
Speaker 1: synthesizer is to a cello what the microwave is to
Speaker 1: the conventional oven. Yeah yeah, to a certain extent. Um
Speaker 1: we say that as lovers of synthesizers. Yeah yeah. But
Speaker 1: then also like the synthesizer, it's also kind of a
Speaker 1: challenge of figuring out what to do with the synthesizer, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the best use of this new technology. Does it
Speaker 1: completely replace the piano? No, it does not. It creates
Speaker 1: something new that you must, you know, figure out how
Speaker 1: to properly utilize exactly right. And as we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: I think that's both of our attitudes toward the microwave.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's a replacement for the oven. It's
Speaker 1: also not inferior. It is just a different kind of
Speaker 1: tool useful for different jobs. So nineteen seventies hit And
Speaker 1: of course also nineteen seventy is the year that that
Speaker 1: Percy Spencer dies, so he doesn't really live long enough
Speaker 1: to see the real ascension of the microwave oven. But
Speaker 1: but but yeah, this is the decade of the microwaves ascension.
Speaker 1: The microwave went from being in just ten percent of
Speaker 1: American households in nineteen seventy to rivaling conventional oven sales
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, and they were apparently out selling gas
Speaker 1: ranges by ninety five. Uh. These stats, by the way,
Speaker 1: are via Jesse Capolt, Kelsey Dean, Madison White, and Helen Selita.
Speaker 1: This is at history of Tech dot uh McClerkin dot
Speaker 1: org slash microwave is a great microwave information site there
Speaker 1: with lots of lots of well sided, well sourced material.
Speaker 1: But they point out that a lot of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this expansion, that a lot of this acceptance of the
Speaker 1: microwave was due to heavy promotion through home and electronics
Speaker 1: magazines with a huge emphasis on science education to combat
Speaker 1: any concerns over this idea that a microwave was some
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, a dangerous hotbed of radiation
Speaker 1: that would hurt us. Yeah, and you can still see
Speaker 1: those concerns coming through even in the terminology we use,
Speaker 1: like the idea of nu king food in the microwave, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know, we're not nuking anything, but we still
Speaker 1: use that terminology. So more evidence that we see of
Speaker 1: microwave ascendency in the nineties seventies, uh is the number
Speaker 1: of microwave cookbooks that we see which featured a lot
Speaker 1: of less than amazing sounding recipes. Yeah. There's if you
Speaker 1: want to see some examples of this, look up paste magazines.
Speaker 1: Thirty horrifying recipes from a seventies microwave cookbook Uh, they're
Speaker 1: pretty Uh, they're pretty apolloing. Most of these entries involved
Speaker 1: big cuts of meat or some manner of recipe that
Speaker 1: seems adapted from a traditional cookbook like a Betty Crocker
Speaker 1: or something talking gourmet meals made from scratch cooked in
Speaker 1: your microwave oven. Uh, and the results were reportedly less
Speaker 1: than awesome. Now, one thing you might be wondering is like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why is it that food cooked in
Speaker 1: a microwave oven is in some cases not as good
Speaker 1: as food cooked in a conventional oven. And I would argue,
Speaker 1: I think one of the main reasons is going to
Speaker 1: be how the exterior of the food is affected by
Speaker 1: microwave cooking. So, first of all, I think, especially if
Speaker 1: you're cooking like a big cut of meat, something that
Speaker 1: would normally happen in the oven, if you cook it
Speaker 1: at the right temperature and all that is, you get
Speaker 1: nice browning on the outside through the my ard reaction,
Speaker 1: which is a very important reaction in food chemistry. It
Speaker 1: creates a lot of the sort of meaty, roasty flavors
Speaker 1: that we like in all kinds of foods, not just meats.
Speaker 1: I mean it's they're in toast. Yeah, we we mentioned
Speaker 1: it on our episode about toast and bread. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the my ard reaction is generally what makes the
Speaker 1: exterior of most cooked browned foods appealing. It makes it
Speaker 1: look good, it makes it smell good, and makes it
Speaker 1: taste good, and you just don't really get that in
Speaker 1: the microwave because of the way it cooks. Another thing, though,
Speaker 1: is that I would guess in some cases at least
Speaker 1: the microwave as a tendency to dry out, especially the
Speaker 1: outer layers of food by just steaming off all of
Speaker 1: the water molecules from it. So you get outer layers
Speaker 1: that might be extremely dry and tough, but not browned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just by and large, this whole line of thinking,
Speaker 1: this sort of you know, gourmet meals from scratch in
Speaker 1: your microwave. Um, this is is basically falls into this
Speaker 1: idea of of more like replacement the year this is
Speaker 1: the only oven you need. You don't need your conventional
Speaker 1: oven anymore because you have the microwave oven. But of
Speaker 1: course we we have to compare this to how we
Speaker 1: actually tend to use the microwave today, now that the
Speaker 1: technology has you know, somewhat settled and found its place
Speaker 1: in our culture, we use them to heat up microwave
Speaker 1: compatible prepackaged meals. For instance, we use them to reheat leftovers,
Speaker 1: and we use them to heat portions of recipes, you know,
Speaker 1: melt your butter, heats and water defrosting is another major usage. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so in many cases we're using it along with
Speaker 1: our other heating methods to cook a meal as well.
Speaker 1: Like I was showing my son in our own kitchen
Speaker 1: that we have, uh, we have three different means of
Speaker 1: of of heating food. We have the microwave using uh
Speaker 1: uh you know, the magnetron. We have a gas powered stove,
Speaker 1: and then we also have the toaster oven with its
Speaker 1: you know, electric heating element. So it's interesting how we'll
Speaker 1: sometimes use all three of these in the preparation of
Speaker 1: a single meal. But the prepackaged microwave meals I think
Speaker 1: are a big one as well. And I was reading
Speaker 1: a little bit about this. According to BBC's The Rise
Speaker 1: of the ready Meal by Denise Winterman two thousand thirteen article,
Speaker 1: companies like Swanson, before the microwave took hold, had already
Speaker 1: influenced our tastes with ready made meals. The TV dinner
Speaker 1: was already here yeah, you get those. You you of
Speaker 1: course would make those in a conventional oven. And I
Speaker 1: think I recall, if I'm not wrong, that those originally
Speaker 1: came about mainly because like turkey, uh, agricultural concerns, We're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out ways to sell turkey outside of
Speaker 1: thanks Giving, and they're like, we can make turkey TV
Speaker 1: dinners to sell people to heat up in their ovens
Speaker 1: without cooking. Yeah, and and also I guess we should
Speaker 1: point out you had the stovetop popcorn as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So so basically we're already down with the idea of
Speaker 1: fast prepackaged meals, right, no preparation, just pop it in
Speaker 1: and said in a microwave just makes it that much easier. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like a logical extension of the TV dinner concept.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I think it's exactly the way in
Speaker 1: which it's an extension of that that sometimes I think
Speaker 1: the microwave is used as a kind of metaphor or
Speaker 1: shorthand for I don't know, for something about consumerism. Do
Speaker 1: you do you detect this, Yeah, yeah, it is. It
Speaker 1: is often the place where we simply heat up a
Speaker 1: prepackaged meal. It is the convenience aspect of it. And
Speaker 1: perhaps I don't know, I feel like maybe when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, maybe there were fewer healthy options for
Speaker 1: microwave meals. Um. Nowadays you can get a lot of
Speaker 1: really you know, quite good food that you can heat
Speaker 1: up in the microwave. Um or you can do I mean,
Speaker 1: you can use a microwave to steam broccoli. You can
Speaker 1: use microwave all kinds of stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, outside
Speaker 1: of just prepackaged meals, you can you can certainly do
Speaker 1: a lot with it that is not cooking a whole turkey.
Speaker 1: So you know, not to not to imply that that
Speaker 1: it's just there's a you know, it's either use it
Speaker 1: to try and cook everything or use it to cook
Speaker 1: prepackaged meals. There's a it's a it's a very useful
Speaker 1: tool in the modern kitchen. It is a part of
Speaker 1: the modern kitchen. Look at us here rehabilitating the image
Speaker 1: of the microwave, well, I mean, on one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: it still has to deal with with image issues. There's
Speaker 1: still still, as we'll discuss in the next episode, encounter
Speaker 1: people spreading untruths about the microwave, slandering the microwave, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, like the microwave is everywhere. The
Speaker 1: microwave is one. The microwave is nearly ubiquitous. I guess
Speaker 1: it doesn't really need our help, right, um, I mean
Speaker 1: the microwave is is waiting for you in your local
Speaker 1: gas station, ready for you to to heat up some
Speaker 1: sort of prepackaged nonsense that you just purchased. Well, let's
Speaker 1: come back next time and heat up that nonsense in
Speaker 1: the meantime. If you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention, head on over ton invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll also find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 1: rating as well. That really helps us out huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to give us feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to say hi or suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, you can email us at contact at
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