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The 20 most fascinating accidental inventions

4. Microwave oven

Jacob Turcotte

It started out more than five feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000. The first microwave, the Radarange, built by Raytheon Corporation in 1947, was based on the accidental discovery of a melted chocolate bar.

Several years prior to Raytheon’s first attempt at the microwave oven, a scientist, Percy Spencer, experimented with a new magnetron, a vacuum tube that releases energy to power radar equipment.

Radar was vital during World War II. It allowed for easier detection of enemy planes and ships, especially German U-Boats. Raytheon scientists looked for new ways to improve the magnetron and increase productivity during a time of great need.

Cooking a TV dinner was not on their to-do lists. It was only by chance – and after the war had ended – that one scientist finally noticed one of the magnetron’s other possible uses.

While working with the device, Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket started melting. He attributed it to the microwaves and, like any good scientist, conducted more tests.

First, Spencer tried corn kernels. After they successfully popped, Spencer tried heating more foods. The results led engineers to attempt to contain the microwaves in a safe enclosure, the microwave oven.

The countertop microwave oven that’s in almost all American kitchens today was first introduced to the public in 1967 by the Amana Corporation (acquired by Raytheon in 1965).

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17 of 20
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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