G.E. Almost Made an Ealry Microwave Oven

G.E. Almost Made an Ealry Microwave Oven - George Snively
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It Cooked! - By George Snively Former G.E. Employee

Sometime in 1954 I was sitting next to Jack Records in a project review meeting in GE's Electronics Laboratory. Jack was the manager of a radar project which was working on extending microwave technology. In an aside to him during the meeting I asked him if he ' d fired up the new magnetron yet as the vendor was calling me to get his invoice paid - but I first needed to know if it was acceptable.

He laughed and said, "We fired it up this morning and a ham sandwich in Joe's lunch, which was close to it, started cooking!". Others at the conference table, who had overheard him, said "What?" and snickered. "That's right"

Jack replied, "and I went out at lunch time and bought a steak to put next to it. It cooked it too - and in just a few minutes!"

In the discussion that followed, the idea that we might be able to make an oven to cook with microwaves, was quickly dismissed as:

1. Magnetrons were horribly expensive.

2. It didn't brown the meat, but cooked from the inside out, and the cooked meat still looked raw.

CONSUMERS CERTAINLY WOULDN'T BUY IT!

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