The First Microwave Oven (Speaking: 1330L; CEFR B2)

The microwave oven is a common kitchen appliance that people use to cook food or heat up leftovers. American engineer Percy Spencer is generally believed to be the person who invented the microwave oven. In the 1940s, Spencer was working at a large military manufacturing company in the United States. One day, while he was building magnetrons for radar sets, Spencer noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Although others may have noted this phenomenon before, Spencer was the first to investigate the reasons behind it. He conducted a series of experiments where he exposed different kinds of food to the magnetron. Eventually, he was able to produce the first true microwave oven by attaching a high-density magnetron to an enclosed metal box.

Spencer and his company filed a patent for this invention in 1945. Two years later, the company introduced the first commercially viable microwave oven, which was intended for use in restaurants and for reheating meals on airplanes. This oven weighed seven hundred fifty pounds, stood almost six feet tall, and cost about five thousand U.S. dollars. This early version of the commercialized microwave oven was not well-received by the market. This was because the oven was not only massive and expensive, but it also had to be continuously cooled by water while it was working.

As technology improved, microwave ovens became smaller and more affordable. In 1967, Spencer’s company introduced their first microwave oven for home use. This oven was small enough to fit on a kitchen countertop. The company also reduced its price to just under five hundred dollars. With a few other companies also launching their home-use microwave ovens at around the same time, microwaves became more and more popular among the U.S. public. In 1975, only four percent of U.S. homes had a microwave oven, but this number jumped to fourteen percent in 1976. Today, approximately ninety percent of households in the U.S. own a microwave oven. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the microwave oven is now indispensable to many people’s daily lives.