The real story
Percy Spencer was orphaned as a toddler, left school around the fifth grade and taught himself electronics, eventually becoming one of Raytheon's top radar engineers. In 1945, standing next to a magnetron, the tube that makes the microwaves for radar, he noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. He tried popcorn kernels next, then an egg, which exploded in a colleague's face.
Raytheon filed a patent that year, and in 1947 it sold the first microwave oven, the Radarange: about 1.8 m tall, around 340 kg and roughly $5,000. Spencer reportedly got the company's standard $2 bonus for the patent. Microwaves only became a home kitchen staple after 1967, when a compact countertop Radarange went on sale for under $500.
