Many patents and inventions in regular daily use and standard features in almost every home, were when invented and registered for patent, considered highly illogical products because they cost so much, because of their size and the technology they used. One example: One of the patents referring to domestic microwave ovens used so often in modern kitchens.
Radio and radar transmitters broadcast RF radio waves with varying frequencies and strengths. In the middle of the 20th Century, when the first patents were registered for microwave ovens for domestic kitchens, the ovens were so big and so costly; they were illogical as products for general use by the public. The use of radio waves to warm food was an idea first promulgated by Percy Spencer, who was employed to develop radar equipment at the Raytheon Company. At the time, there was no awareness of the danger to human beings when exposed to high strength radio waves. One day, when Spencer already had some 120 patents to his name, he was exposed to high levels of radiation and found that the chocolate in his pocket had melted. His experience with patents helped him understand the phenomenon immediately. From that point, the path was open for him to draw up and register yet more patents for kitchen equipment, which today seem revolutionary, but at the time of their invention seemed to be still a very long way off from implementation and general distribution – because of their price, size and technology.
The first experiments conducted on the invention and kitchen equipment patents, using the first microwave oven involved heating popcorn and an egg, which exploded. In 1945, the Raytheon Company registered patents for the microwave kitchen cooking process.
The first microwave oven for a domestic kitchen weighed 340 kilograms and stood some 1.8 meters tall. The oven had to be specially cooled with water and its power consumption was close to 3KWh. Today’s kitchen microwave ovens require much less – 1KWH.
At the time of the invention of the microwave, the Amana Company was among other things, involved in the development of patents for kitchen equipment and the patent on the microwave oven was considered such an outstanding success, the Raytheon Company bought Amana to promote and create patents in the field of microwave ovens for the domestic kitchen. The Amana Company successfully built a magnetron into the ovens, which enabled significant reductions in oven prices.
Today, it is difficult to imagine a modern kitchen without the patents registered for the microwave oven.