Description
Book SynopsisThe microwave oven is the most important technical innovation in the kitchen of the twentieth century. Most other technical developments had been pioneered in the Victorian age or before, even if their consequences were not fully absorbed until the modern era. The microwave, however, was wholly new, a chance spin-off of the development of radar in the Second World War - the first ovens were called ''Radaranges''. The first commercial applications and patents were based in the U.S.A. but there were parallel developments in Britain and Europe, the most important of which centred on the firms of J. Lyons & Co., and the Dutch firm of Philips.
Lewis Napleton, a fresh-faced boy just out of the RAF, joined the food manufacturing and tea-shop-owning firm of J. Lyons in the early ''50s. He was soon closely involved in microwave projects during his pupillage there. He went on to devote the rest of his professional life to the promotion and sale of microwave ovens by Lyons, Philips, and the American firm of Litton. This book is a memoir of his part in this pioneering episode. When the history of modern food and cookery comes to be written, it will be an important primary source for tracing the patterns of promotion and up-take of this device - particularly the way in which it was first linked to commercial foodservice exploitation before its entry into the domestic market. The microwave is now the biggest-selling item in domestic white goods. This little book has many amusing anecdotes, including an early sighting of Baroness Thatcher when a colleague at Lyons, and is plentifully illustrated with contemporary photographs of microwaves in their period setting.
