Serendipity sometimes occurs without realizing. Some of them are just simple things and just became insignificant beneficial events. But sometimes, it appeared to be a miraculous fortune. The invention that changed most citizen's lifestyle, A microwave oven.
A microwave oven was made by an American self-taught engineer named Percy Spencer in 1945. He was working in the Raytheon Manufacturing Company that provide the military's radar and artillery missiles (Blitz 6). Spencer was one of the most important leading experts in radar technology during World War II. Then in his usual day of experiments in the laboratory, he realized that his precious after lunch candy bar in his pocket had melted. "It was a gooey, sticky mess," Spencer said (Hiskey 5).
After that accidentally discovered event, he decided to experiment on this confused mystery. He gathers his colleagues to work on different foods and the first microwave popcorn has been born. He shared his daily experiment's food to other engineers in the laboratory without thinking if it were safe or not. According to his grandson speech, unfortunately, he didn't know if it were safe or not beside considering whether it is edible food (Blitz 9).
On October 8, 1945, Spencer success to produce the very first complete microwave oven called Radarange. Two years later, Raytheon managed to release the commercial version of Radarange to the market for more than two thousand dollars and weight more than seven hundred fifty pounds (Hiskey 7). It is not until two decades later that microwave ovens became affordable for everybody.
From Spencer's snack event until today, his invention has been serving people a great amount of time. It has been part of most the people daily life to use a microwave oven. It couldn't be wrong if one said that every single house has his invention in the kitchen. Since microwave oven is one of the easiest methods to cook or reheating cooked food. It would take only two to five minutes to heat most of the food right away. Thus, microwave oven became a huge success in terms of a convenience and time-saving way to prepared food without cooking knowledge needed.
It doesn't require much time for microwave ovens to be popular from it easiness to operate. According to Spencer himself said that he even sold it to a blind person (Hiskey 6). All they need is just turning the knob, rotate it to certain heat degree they preferred, and the amount of time needed. Even a child could be using it without any problem. In fact, the microwave ovens interface turns to be simpler as the years goes by.
Microwaves also changed how we cooked. By having time-saving invention way to prepare a meal, TV dinners became more accessible. TV dinners a.k.a. frozen meals. It is an almost ready to eat meals in a package tray sells in the groceries store. In 1950 the very first commercial TV dinner was sold by Swanson. It begins with Swanson company had a problem with a huge amount of Thanksgiving turkey dinner leftovers, it was over 260 tons. So, one of the employees came up with this idea of selling foods in the tray when they saw the airplane aluminum trays in their garage. The package they have made is filled with turkey, corn bread, green peas and sweet potatoes. After Swanson advertised their newest product it became a massive hit with over two and a half million sales in that year (Trimarchi 4).
However, TV dinners from Swanson still need an oven and required over 25 minutes to reheat. This is where Spencer's invention shine. After microwave ovens begin to become affordable towards customer, Swanson and other TV dinner's maker company begins to work on the microwavable package. Then, the first microwaveable tray released in the market on 1986 as well as Swanson original TV dinner tray was added into the Museum of American History (“National TV Dinner Day” 5).
By having a newest packaging method to be able to heat with the microwave oven, it increased the hits of both products selling market. Thus, there are more options on the microwavable meal, which became varieties from many companies. And became a regular meal in most of the people daily life and a part of a food culture just from an accidentally created invention.
Works Cited
Blitz, Matt. “The Amazing True Story of How the Microwave Was Invented by Accident.”
PopularMechanics. 23 February 2016. www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a19567/how-the-microwave-was-invented-by-accident. Accessed 21 September 2016.
Hiskey, Daven. “the Microwave Oven was Invented by Accident by a Man Who was Orphaned
and Never Finished Grammar School.” TodayIFoundOut. 24 August 2011. www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/08/the-microwave-oven-was-invented-by-accident-by-a-man-who-was-orphaned-and-never-finished-grammar-school. Accessed 21 September 2016.
“National TV Dinner Day.” NationalDayCalender.
http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-tv-dinner-day-september-10. Accessed 21
September 2016
Trimarchi, Maria. “History of TV Dinners.” HowStuffWorks.
recipes.howstuffworks.com/menus/history-tv-dinner.html. Accessed 21 September 2016.
An Effect of Accidental Invention
