Science: 微波炉的意外发明 – The Accidental Invention of the Microwave

The Chocolate That Melted in His Pocket: The Accidental Invention of the Microwave

In 1945, American engineer Percy Spencer worked at a defense company called Raytheon. His job was to research radar technology—a military technology used to detect the position of aircraft and ships. This technology relied on a device called a magnetron to produce microwave radiation. Spencer worked next to this equipment every day and had long since gotten used to it.

One day, he was standing next to a running magnetron when he suddenly noticed that the chocolate in his pocket had melted. This in itself wasn’t very strange—it was well known that radar equipment generated heat. But Spencer was a very curious person. He didn’t ignore this small matter; instead, he began to think: why did the chocolate melt so quickly?

He decided to do an experiment. He placed some popcorn next to the magnetron. Before long, the popcorn began to pop with a crackling sound. Spencer was very excited and continued experimenting. He placed an egg next to the magnetron. The egg exploded.

Spencer realized that microwave radiation could heat food from the inside, much faster than traditional heating methods. This was a completely new discovery. He immediately told the company about this idea, and Raytheon applied for a patent in 1945.

Two years later, the first commercial microwave oven was born. It was called the ‘Radarange,’ but it was completely different from the microwaves we use in our homes today. It was nearly two meters tall, weighed over three hundred kilograms, and cost the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars today. Only restaurants and military kitchens could afford this kind of microwave.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that smaller, cheaper home microwaves began to appear. By the 1970s and 80s, the microwave gradually became a standard appliance in ordinary family kitchens all over the world.

This story tells us something interesting: many world-changing inventions were not the result of scientists sitting in a lab racking their brains, but rather of someone noticing a small detail by chance while doing something else, and then asking ‘why?’ Spencer didn’t ignore the melted chocolate in his pocket. It was precisely this bit of curiosity that changed the way people all over the world cook.