Skip to main content

The First Food Ever Microwaved

Image
By

The first food ever cooked by microwaves was a chocolate bar.  This wasn’t on purpose.  It happened in 1945 when a scientist working for Raytheon got too close to a room where radar was being tested.  Radar was generated by magnetron tubes that produce a radio waves of a very small frequency—thus giving them the name microwave.  Following this accidental (and messy) discovery, the scientists at Raytheon tried cooking other things, like popcorn (it worked!) and a raw egg in the shell (it exploded.  I tried the same experiment when I was a teenager, not realizing that in doing so, I was standing on the shoulders of giants.  I cleaned up the mess, but my mother still wasn’t happy about it.) 

The first microwave ovens were sold commercially under the name Radarange, since they grew out of radar research.  Early adopters paid over $2,000 for the first Radaranges, which is a lot for a microwave now; it was more or less two months’ household wage in 1947!  Mostly they were used in commercial kitchens, in restaurants and cruise ships.  In 1967, Raytheon paired up with the Amana Corporation and created a more affordable microwave, which sold for about $500.  The price has come down since, as the microwave has moved from novelty luxury to a necessity.  Or would you rather eat that leftover pizza cold?
Related image
The Radarange: so easy!  So convenient!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the Lemon was Invented

By
Lemons How do you make a lemon?  Silly question, isn’t it?  You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right?  That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy.  Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow.  You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true.  The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma.  (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar .  I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.)  The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years.  The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits.  One f...
6 comments
Read more

The Massachusetts Codfish License Plate Fiasco of 1928

By
A 1928 Massachusetts license plate with a bad omen! 1928 was a bad year for the Massachusetts codfish yield.  Whose fault was it?  The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles', of course—or you might think so, to listen to some of the irate fishermen that year. The problem started with the new license plate design.  At the time, it was common for states to issue brand new license plates every year, and Massachusetts was no exception.  The new plates for 1928 featured something revolutionary, too: it was the first time any state put a picture of anything on the plate.  Since Massachusetts was known for cod, the picture the RMV chose was, logically, a codfish.  It appeared at the bottom of the plate.  In the bottom left-hand corner was the year, 1928.  In the bottom right-hand corner was the state, written “Mass.”  And in the middle was the codfish—the first picture of anything that ever appeared on an American license plate...
10 comments
Read more

Origins of the Word Hoser, eh?

By
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”.  It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice.  Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes.   I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult?  Yes… and no.   The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult.  It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser .  Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word.  One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game...
1 comment
Read more