Hello all, I’m writing this while I sit down to a plate of
warmed up leftovers. Mmmm... Last night's dinner for today's breakfast. As I was heating up my food in the microwave I
started thinking about how much I, and much of Western society, use the microwave,
and how much its use permeates food culture today. So I’ve decided to do a
5-part series on the influence of the microwave, with each day covering a
different topic and perspective.
The first entry will be a quick history of the microwave and
its early beginnings. I’ll look at its initial uses, who it was used by, and
how it became part of mainstream culture.
The second entry will focus on the early years (1970s) of
the microwave boom in social culture and the reasons why it became so popular.
I will look at the other things happening in history at the time, like the
women’s movement, and how that might have affected the microwave’s rise in
popular culture.
The third entry will cover the later years of the
microwave’s ascent to full immersion in pop culture and the ramifications of
this for society. I’ll discuss pizza pockets, TV dinners and the frozen food isles at
grocery stores, as well as capitalism and the desire for maximum efficiency
with minimum cost.
The fourth entry will look at some of the resistance movements
and countercultures that view the high prevalence of the microwave as a bad
thing. I’ll talk about some of the perceived negative effects of the microwave
and the alternatives that people have created in order to usurp its powerful
hold on today’s society.
The fifth and final entry in this series will be dedicated
to my experiences and what I learned from this exploration. Throughout this
project I will explore different perspectives of this piece of technology by
conducting casual, informal interviews with a variety of people about their
microwave use and their ideas concerning it. I will also be conducting 2 mini
ethnographic studies. During the first one I will live microwave-free for a
period of time, to see how much I actually rely on this appliance and how much
its use is second nature to me. I’ll then go to the opposite side of the
spectrum and will try relying only on the microwave to cook my food. This entry
will be more of an exploratory piece concerning the impact of the microwave on
food culture and production and the conflicting viewpoints surrounding it.
So, to the history of the microwave oven.
The microwave oven was invented in the United States as a
result of work done in World War II around the creation and use of radar
systems to help locate German U-boats. Basically, a guy by the name of Percy
Spencer, who worked for a company called the Raytheon Corporation, was
experimenting with something called magnetrons (tubes that produced short, or micro-waves) when
he realized the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted (an unfortunate scenario
that’s happened to everyone at some point). Instead of crying like a baby over
his ruined pants and the fact that he now had no chocolate, he started
questioning why that happened. He created a small box to experiment in and
began looking at other foods like corn kernels (the first popcorn) and eggs,
which incidentally exploded in the face of the guy standing beside him. He realized
that these microwaves could cook food in a very short amount of time, revolutionizing
the way we cook.
By 1954 the Raytheon Corporation produced its first
commercial microwave, the 1161 Radarange, which was 6ft tall, weighed 750lbs
and cost around $3000. These puppies were clearly not made for home use, and
were sold mainly to large food production facilities. They didn’t seem to catch
on much in mainstream food culture, mainly due to their outrageous price (3000
dollars! I can buy a decent car for that), until 1967 when the company revamped
its design, creating more reasonably priced models ($495) that weighed
significantly less and could fit on a home cook’s counter top. These “less
expensive” models were still way out of reach for most people, so the microwave
became something of a status symbol for the richer members of the upper class
(an “I’m classy because I can warm up my leftovers faster than you” kind of
competition).
By the 1970’s microwaves became more popular and were
present in many people’s homes. As more people started purchasing them, the
fear myths surrounding microwave use were disbanded in favour of the many
benefits of this new technology. The previous cultural beliefs that microwave
use would cause diseases, sterility, blindness and radiation poisoning were
disproved and they became more accepted in modern society (thankfully... otherwise we'd all be dead). The manufacturing companies also
used a large amount of advertising (examples shown above) to showcase microwaves as a revolutionary
way to cook and promote all of their potential benefits for the family and life in general. Their increasing
prevalence in society was fully realized in 1975 when the sale of microwave
ovens became higher than that of gas ranges. As new features were created and
new designs produced, the microwave became a popular and socially desirable
appliance to have, and with the promotion of all the benefits and things it
could do (defrost, cook, bake, keep warm, etc.), the microwave was becoming an appliance people could rely on to do just about anything.
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