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# The smoke alarm goes off every time I cook dinner
- URL: https://www.thefrictionlog.com/09480/
- Published: 2026-10-02T16:19:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T15:27:32.000Z
- Description: Filed: the late 1970s · Patched · hush buttons and cooking-tested alarms
- Author: The Clerk
- Tags: Patched

*I'm fanning it with a dish towel. The dog is under the bed. The chicken is fine.* — Apartment renter, 2019

The smoke detector was found by a man giving up. In the late 1930s a Swiss physicist named Walter Jaeger couldn't get his poison-gas sensor to work, lit a cigarette, and watched the needle move. Since mid-2024, new alarms have to stay quiet in a lab test while hamburgers broil nearby. That same year a federal test kitchen found they weren't clearly better at ignoring cooking than the old ones. They're still very good at detecting dinner.

**For now**: keep smoke alarms at least 10 feet from the stove; closer invites false alarms.