Cooking and Microwave Oven Invention

Microwave Oven for Fast Cooking.  A kitchen appliance that heats food by dielectric heating.

Microwave is a food fixture many of us can't do without, mainly at home and occasionally at work at lunchtime when we bring our own food to work.

So how does the microwave work?

Well, we use microwave through its radiation to heat  polarized molecules within the food. Simply explained and without too much technicality, the food is evenly heated throughout, to at work for our selves and nowadays in our busy lives, we can't do without.  

Microwave as an Invention

In 1955, the first microwave for home use was introduced by Tappan.

In 1967, the first personal microwave was introduced by the Amana Corporation.

Basic microwave ovens heat foods quickly and efficiently, but, unlike conventional ovens, microwaves do not brown or bake food. This makes them therefore unsuitable for cooking certain foods, or to achieve certain culinary effects.  However additional kinds of heat sources can be added to microwave packaging, or into combination microwave ovens, to add these additional effects.

Microwave Oven History

Until 1940, microwave cooking was impossible, not until Sir John Randall and Dr. H.A.H. Boot, of Birmingham University, invented the magnetron, specifically for use with Britain's radar system during World War II.

A magnetron produces electro-magnetic waves which are only 12 centimetres long which have a frequency of 2,450 microseconds - that is, very short and fast waves. So obviously, there wasn't any intention for magnetron to be used for cooking.

Voila! Magnetron is Related to Cooking after all!

Soon it was found that in a cooker, if the food is bombarded with these radio waves, there is molecular activity in which heat is created. This means that food can be cooked quickly.

First Microwave Oven: Raytheon Inc. USA

The first oven that used the principle related to magnetron was Raytheon Inc., USA, sometime in 1945 to 1947, but it became very popular throughout US And Europe from 1980 as people realised the potential of the microwave oven for quick cooking, or for heating pre-cooked food.  It wasn't that expensive either.



Resource:

Who Invented, Discovered, Made the First..? by Kenneth Ireland. Great Britain: Ravette Books, 1988.