It was too big, too expensive and too scary for consumers to use, but found its way to restaurants, railroad cars and ocean liners. The first microwave oven was 5’6” tall, weighed 750 pounds and cost as much as $3,000. When it popped in front of the magnetron, he realized that microwaves could cook food.įrom there he went on to develop the microwave oven by adding a high density electromagnetic field generator to an enclosed metal box. Intrigued, he sent out for unpopped popcorn. One day at work in 1945 Spencer was standing next to an active magnetron when a candy bar in his pocket melted. For his work, the Navy awarded him the Distinguished Public Service Award. bombers were equipped with his radar sets, powerful enough to spot U-boat periscopes from the air.ĭuring World War II, Spencer’s staff at Raytheon increased to 5,000 from 15. Raytheon produced 80 percent of the magnetron tubes used in U.S. Percy Spencer figured it was faster to stamp and solder magnetron parts than to machine them, and production rose to 2,600 a day. Raytheon was producing 17 magnetrons a day. A priority for the military was the production of magnetrons, which generated the radio signals used in radar. His expertise in radio tubes helped win a government contract to produce radar combat equipment for MIT’s Radiation Laboratory. He was so adept at it he “could make a working tube out of a sardine can,” said a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist. By 1939, he was a top-flight expert in vacuum tube design. Percy Spencer was hired as Raytheon’s fourth employee in 1925. In August 1924 Marshall and Bush renamed the company Raytheon, a portmanteau word meaning ‘beam of light from the gods.’ The company would eventually move to an old button factory in Waltham, Mass. The tubes transformed radios into affordable household appliances from complicated hobbyist experiments. The rectifier tube eliminated the need for two batteries to operate a radio. The idea didn’t work, so in 1924 they decided to make S gas rectifier vacuum tubes invented by Charles G. They aimed to manufacture a refrigerator with no moving parts. Vannevar Bush and Laurence Marshall, two engineers who’d roomed together at Tufts University, had started the American Appliance Company in Cambridge, Mass. The Navy discharged him honorably at the end of World War I. He also taught himself trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, metallurgy and radio technology. “I just got hold of a lot of textbooks and taught myself while I was standing watch at night,” he said. He decided he wanted to be one so he joined the Navy, where he learned about radio technology. In 1912 he read how wireless radio operators directed the ship Carpathia to rescue Titanic passengers. He learned about electricity by studying at night and by trial and error. Intrigued, Percy Spencer applied for one of three job openings as an electrician. He left school after the fifth grade and got a job in a spool factory when he was 12, working from sunrise to sundown.Īt 16 he learned the owner of a paper mill planned to electrify the plant. Young Percy and his widowed aunt traveled around New England, earning money from her weaving and whatever odd job he could pick up. His father died when he was 18 months old, and his mother sent him to live with his aunt and uncle. Percy Spencer was born July 19, 1894, in Howland, Maine.
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