I have
heard two wives' tales regarding the
origin of this
CD-ending device. One
involves a
man who was
working with a
Magnetron and he noticed that a
candy bar had
melted in his
pocket (this of course having nothing to do with the
standard M&Ms
claim). Through
various other
discovery, he managed to put this
heating
aspect of
microwaves to good use. The other
story being a more
colorful tale about a
How the Potatoe Delayed the microwave 10 years, (
How the Potato Delayed the Microwave 10 years)
Several
facts however
remain undisputed: First, they were very
unpopular at their
beginnings out of
Raytheon. They were used in
commerical cooking applications
early on (they were referred to then as a
Radio Range), with
several diners using this new
invention as a
primary cooking
device. My
grandmother used to tell stories about such (and while they are not 100%
accurate, the
color of them is more than enough to make up for some
fudge here and there). The first units (as my friend likes to call his older microwave "the lead apron kind"), were huge and bulky. They started off in
Boston,
Massachusetts (where
Raytheon is located), and
spread from there. These
stories came to me from
residents of that area around that time, and the
children of the
Raytheon engineers on that
project.