Three minutes in the microwave and the middle's still frozen
Burned my thumb on the plate. Then the lasagna crunched. — Office worker, 2026
The first microwave oven you could buy, back in the 1940s, stood about six feet tall and weighed about 750 pounds. That's not a lunchroom appliance. Microwaves hit food unevenly, hot in one spot and cold in the next, so the Japanese company Sharp put a spinning plate in. That helps with the spots. It doesn't help with depth. The waves only get about an inch in, and the middle of a lasagna has to wait for the edges to pass the heat along. Lasagna was never in a hurry.
For now: stir or flip it halfway through, then let it stand two minutes before eating.
The full file
Nobody set out to cook with it. In the mid-1940s a Raytheon engineer named Percy Spencer was standing by a magnetron, the tube that powers radar, and found the candy bar in his pocket had melted. So he tried popcorn, which popped, and an egg, which cooked so fast it blew up.
Spencer had left school around the fifth grade to help support his family. For the microwave, Raytheon paid him what it usually paid for a patent: a $2 bonus.
Amana's first countertop model for the house, the 1967 Radarange, cost $495. By 1997 about 90% of American homes had one. Two dollars. I'd have asked for more.
Relates to No. 09340.
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