{"id":4126,"date":"2011-12-18T22:51:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T03:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=4126"},"modified":"2011-12-18T22:51:45","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T03:51:45","slug":"the-first-microwave-was-unveiled-in-1931","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/18\/the-first-microwave-was-unveiled-in-1931\/","title":{"rendered":"The first microwave was unveiled in &#8230; 1931?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everything I know about the timeline of the microwave&#8212;which isn&#8217;t much&#8212;I learned from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Microwave_oven\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Date #1 to keep in mind: &#8220;The specific heating effect of a beam of high-power microwaves was discovered accidentally in 1945 &#8230; &#8221; (I did know  it was an accidental discovery, though not the year.)<\/p>\n<p>Date #2 to note: &#8220;The use of high-frequency electric fields for heating dielectric materials had been proposed in 1934 &#8230; &#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If that&#8217;s the case, then how is it that the following article appeared in the <a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/gst\/abstract.html?res=F50D13F83E55147A93C3A91789D85F458385F9\">February 1, 1931 issue of the <em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, reporting that &#8220;cooking by means of electric waves was demonstrated here yesterday on a machine which produced a nicely prepared steak in five minutes&#8221; and that &#8220;the apparatus consists of an enamelled [sic] box about the size of a radio receiver which contains an ordinary high frequency machine&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/NYTGermanOven.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/NYTGermanOven-128x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"NYTGermanOven\" width=\"128\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4127\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/NYTGermanOven-128x300.jpg 128w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/NYTGermanOven.jpg 425w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 128px) 100vw, 128px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Is there something I&#8217;m not getting here because I&#8217;m scientifically illiterate? Wasn&#8217;t what happened in 1931&#8212;&#8221;cooking by means of electric waves&#8221; in &#8220;an enamelled box&#8221;&#8212;a microwave oven?<\/p>\n<p>Educate me, all you big brains out there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everything I know about the timeline of the microwave&#8212;which isn&#8217;t much&#8212;I learned from Wikipedia. Date #1 to keep in mind: &#8220;The specific heating effect of a beam of high-power microwaves was discovered accidentally in 1945 &#8230; &#8221; (I did know it was an accidental discovery, though not the year.) Date #2 to note: &#8220;The use [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-4126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-old-newspapers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}