About this episode

This episode explores the life and contributions of Percy Spencer, the inventor of microwave cooking, and the paradox of his lack of personal fortune despite his groundbreaking work.

In a laboratory built for war, a self-taught engineer with no college degree reached into his pocket and found his chocolate bar had melted — with no flame, no heat, nothing but a humming radar device nearby. Almost anyone else would have wiped their hand and forgotten it. Percy Spencer asked why. And in asking, he discovered microwave cooking and changed nearly every kitchen on earth.This episode of the MR. HANSoN Podcast tells the Percy Spencer story straight — including the parts the legend gets wrong. Orphaned and dirt-poor in rural Maine, Spencer left school at twelve, taught himself electricity, radio, and advanced math with no instructor, and rose at Raytheon on results alone. During World War II he didn't invent the magnetron — the British did — but he cracked how to mass-produce it, turning a trickle into thousands a day and helping win the radar war. That mastery is exactly why, when a candy bar melted near a magnetron, he was the one person on earth prepared to understand it.But here's the twist that makes this episode the season's counterpoint: Spencer built an empire for everyone but himself. He reportedly received the standard two-dollar patent gratuity while the…

Topics covered

• microwave cooking
• invention
• engineering
• history
• entrepreneurship

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