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October 7, 2024

— Steven Wright

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The wireless

Today's story starts with a tragedy and ends in your kitchen.

In April 1912, the RMS Titanic sank. We all know this story, of course, but maybe one thing we don't appreciate simply because we take it for granted is that it was reported almost immediately. The Titanic went down in water 400 miles from Newfoundland, and yet the news was on the front page of the New York Times hours later.

The wireless telegraph was fairly new then. Besides allowing the world to learn of the tragedy quickly, it's also one of the key reasons that roughly 700 passengers survived, and the power of this new technology was fascinating to a lot of people who were paying attention for the first time.

Among those whose interest was piqued was an 18-year-old orphan named Percy Spencer, who had spent his adolescence working in a mill in a rural town in Maine, and who later sought to get as far away from Maine as possible, by enlisting in the U.S. Navy.

When he wasn't standing watch on a ship, he later recalled, he was studying -- first becoming a self-taught expert on telegraph and radio, which led to a better job in the military -- and later adding other scientific subjects, like trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, and metallurgy.

When his enlistment ended in 1925, Spencer did what many military veterans do: he got a job in the defense industry.

His autodidact tendencies continued, and despite his lack of formal education, by the late 1930s, he was one of the leading experts in radar tube design. As chief of the power tube division at Raytheon, he significantly improved the production of magnetrons, which ultimately led to a lucrative contract for the company during World War II.

Toward the end of the war, Spencer was leading a project building magnetrons, when he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket melted. Intrigued that microwave technology might be harnessed for cooking, he started experimenting with other foods.

One early and ironic choice: popcorn kernels, which goes to show that microwave popcorn was one of the first-ever use cases for his new invention.

It turns out, "invention" is the right word, because the reason we're discussing this now is that tomorrow, October 8, marks the 79th anniversary of the patent Spencer got for the microwave oven. Since he was working for Raytheon at the time, his employer got the money; he got a $2 bonus.

Market success didn't follow right away; the first "radar range" Raytheon produced was nearly 6 feet tall and weighed almost half a ton, so it wasn't exactly easy to fit in a suburban house.

But, between 1964 and 1965, Raytheon built a legitimate kitchen-sized microwave and bought home appliance maker Amana.

Within a decade after that, Americans bought more microwave ovens than regular gas or electric ovens.

Spencer died at age 76 in 1970. He had more than 150 patents, but as his grandson later pointed out, he passed away just a few years too soon to see just how successful his microwave invention became.

Still, I like this story a lot -- both because I used our microwave to heat up leftover pizza while writing my version of it, and because if the Titanic sinking really did spark Spencer's scientific curiosity (he said it did), then it goes to show how even terrible tragedies can lead to unpredictable but good results.

For all of his inventiveness, Spencer wasn't exactly a quote machine, so I'm going to pivot hard and give today's quote of the day to comedian Steven Wright:

Just imagine, if it weren't for the Titanic tragedy, that joke would have made zero sense.

Did you see ...

• Elon Musk joined Donald Trump on stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms calling Trump the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.” Musk's appearance was widely mocked on social media, in part for his awkward jumping all over the stage. (Rolling Stone)
• Less than 10 days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida, the state is bracing for another potentially devastating blow from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, this one a potential Category 3 storm. Tropical Storm Milton formed in the western Gulf on Saturday morning, just hours after it became a tropical depression, the National Hurricane Center said in a special alert. The 13th named storm, which uses the letter M, is running ahead of pace – it doesn’t usually occur until October 25. (CNN)
• Related: Owning a home in Florida can be a huge gamble. Some people are starting to question whether it's worth it. (Business Insider)
• OK, the New York Times covered President Biden's aging almost nonstop until he dropped out; now they're focused on former President Trump. Headline and subhead: Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age. With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years. (NY Times)
• Former New York Gov. David Paterson and his stepson were attacked Friday while on a walk in Manhattan by assailants who had “a previous interaction” with the stepson, a spokesperson for Paterson said. Paterson, 70, and his adult stepson both went to a hospital. “They both suffered some injuries but were able to fight off their attackers,” the spokesperson said. Paterson was lieutenant governor under Gov. Eliot Spitzer and took over in March 2008 after Spitzer resigned due to a prostitution scandal. Paterson served the remainder of the term, until the end of 2010 but did not seek reelection. (NBC News)
• Thousands of Hungarians gathered outside the headquarters of the country's state television on Saturday, protesting against what they described as the government's "propaganda machine" and calling for an independent public service media. The centre-right TISZA party, led by media-savvy political newcomer, Peter Magyar, is posing the biggest challenge to right-wing nationalist Orban since he swept to power in 2010. (Reuters)
• Meet the HENRYS (high earner, not rich yet) who earn 6-figure salaries but don't feel rich. (WSJ)