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Percy Spencer joined the navy  and learned about radios in his capacity as a wireless man.  Following the service he got a job at Raytheon, a manufacturer of vacuum tubes.  He did well and rose within the ranks despite little formal education.

During WWII Winston Churchill sent emissaries to America in search of a way to speed up the manufacture of magnetrons, the tube at the heart of Radar devices.   A key component for the magnetron was a copper block into which  was cut a precise dome-like void.  10 a week.  That was the fast-as-they-could-make-'em output of the machinists in England.   The U. S. War Department sent the Brits to Raytheon.  Sitting in on the meeting, Percy Spencer asked if he could take the copper block home with him.   British spooks riding shotgun with the scientists at first said no but finally relented and Spencer was able to study and "sleep on it" at home.  The next day he showed up with the item and told everyone that he had an idea.  They would stamp out thin pieces of copper that when stacked in a particular order would produce the desired shape and void.  Alternating layers of solder would fuse the sheets together.  MIT engineers, reciting formulaic chapter and verse, told him why his idea couldn't possibly work.  At this point Percy Spencer should have invoked Thomas Edison's famous admonition:  "There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something."  Spencer and Raytheon (they had the good sense to know which horse to bet on) ignored them and of course it worked.  Magnetron production at Raytheon, thanks to a conveyer oven Spencer designed to bake the sheets,  throttled up and could produce 10 thousand a week!  The PhD engineers at MIT conceded that "Percy Spencer could make a tube out of a sardine can."  We find this statement parochial and condescending and much prefer Albert Einstein's elegantly sweeping axiom "Imagination is more important than knowledge." 

One day, years later, Percy Spencer walked up to an energized magnetron and noticed that a chocolate bar had gone all hot and gooey in his shirt pocket.  He immediately sent out for a bag of un-popped pop corn.  He put a paper bag of it in front of the still energized magnetron and after a short time the corn started popping!   Raytheon had it's first experimental Radar Range® microwave cooking device thanks to Percy Spencer.  Percy Spencer received 120 patents.  85% of American homes have microwave ovens.   Percy Spencer -  a hero in war and peace.

© 2002 Devinet Inc.