The Transformation In The Kitchen

The First Microwave Oven
Copied from the Mansfield Ohio News Journal

MANSFIELD -- Fifty-five years ago, a Mansfield company started a transformation that would change kitchens across the nation and around the world. Its newly unveiled oven was unlike anything else on the market. It plugged into an electric socket and cooked food while remaining cool to the touch. Even more impressive, it smashed conventional cooking times. It could cook a five-pound roast in 30 minutes, bake a cake in six minutes and poach an egg in 20 seconds. The Tappan Stove Company called it the RL-1, an electronic oven, but you might know it better as the microwave oven. The Mansfield company debuted the world's first household microwave on Oct. 25, 1955, at a lavish red carpet event in New York City. TV cameras and reporters captured the event, which made headlines throughout the country. Tappan would begin selling the microwave coast-to-coast early the next year at a retail price of $1,200, the equivalent of $9,780 today. The public was leery of the price tag and the strange, new device, but the microwave would help pave the way for the now-staple kitchen appliance.