He lost his father when he was a toddler and his mother when he was at sixth standard. He finished his journey from village school to a local workshop as an apprentice at the tender age of thirteen. That was his academic knowledge and the rest he taught by himself. That self-taught engineer was so brilliant at his business that the US Army appointed him with a group of Ivy League scientists for the second most important project of WW-II. That project was, developing state-of-the-art radar technology. However, that genius ended up inventing a fancy kitchen gadget – the microwave oven.
His radars were destroying enemy convoys here and there and he was receiving both awards and rewards from the government. Despite such unprecedented success, he was not happy at all. The reason behind that unhappiness was his ‘highly educated’ colleagues who would never spare a single opportunity to remind him that he didn’t belong there. During any conversation, they used to force him to address them as ‘Doctor’. Legend says, despite all these insults from his colleagues, that brilliant American engineer Percy Spencer kept working on his deadly combat-ready radar technology Magnetron at M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory.
One day, when he was working standing in front of Magnetron then he noticed that the machine had melted the candy bar in his pocket. Intrigued Spencer placed a bowl of corn in front of his machine and prepared the world’s first microwaved popcorn. The next day, he placed an egg under that machine and one of his skeptic colleagues started staring at the process pretty closely and the poached egg blasted on his face. Thus, Magnetron prepared the world’s first poached egg.
After that, it was twenty years and a series of modifications before Magnetron finally entered the kitchen as a microwave oven. Though the entire concept of cooking without heat was kind of alien back then. Still, one genius inventor Percy Spencer made it possible. Modern kitchens can not survive with a microwave oven, but originally it was suppose to be a deadly weapon of the mass destruction. That fancy kitchen gadget was invented by an inventor who could not afford a university education. As recognition of his groundbreaking discovery, he received a much-deserved honorary ‘Doctorate’ from the University of Massachusetts. However, for the rest of his life that humble man, never flaunted his title and accomplishments.
Do you like this amazing story of an inventor who was a born genius? If you love such fascinating stories of inventions and discoveries, visit our “Stories of Invention” section. Discover how messy, accidental, or even funny moments have shaped the world and human history!
