Did you know that the microwave oven was invented by chance by an orphan man who did not complete his primary education? This man was Percy Spencer.
When he was about 18 months old, his father died and his mother left him to be raised by his uncles. Then, when Spencer was just seven years old, her uncle also died. Spencer left primary school and at the age of twelve began working from dawn to dusk in a coil factory, where he continued to work until he was sixteen.
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Then he decided to join the US Navy. Thanks to his skill in electrical engineering, he helped develop and produce combat radar equipment, which was of great importance to the Allies, becoming the second highest priority military project during World War II, just after the Manhattan Project.
How was the microwave oven created?
One day, while working on building magnetrons for radar, Spencer was standing in front of an active radar when he noticed that a chocolate bar he was carrying in his pocket for lunch had melted. Spencer wasn’t the first to notice something like this with radar, but he was the first to check it out.
He started trying to heat other foods to see if it would produce a similar effect. The first people to intentionally heat it were corn kernels, becoming the first microwave popcorn in history. Then Spencer decided to try heating an egg. He took a teapot, cut a hole in the side of it, put the entire egg inside, and positioned the magnetron to direct the microwave waves into the hole. Result: The egg exploded in his face.
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This is how the first microwave oven was born. He filed the patent on October 8, 1945. The first commercially produced microwave was about six feet long, weighed about 700 pounds, and cost about $5,000. It wasn’t until 1967 when the first affordable ($495) microwave (pantry model) hit the market.
An uncomfortable feeling can be the root of something much better
What would you do if a piece of chocolate melted on your pants while you were at your desk? Maybe you get angry and go home to change your clothes. But Spencer took advantage of that opportunity to give the world the microwave oven.
The reason behind our “meltdown” is to generate invention. Every uncomfortable situation in life can prompt us to invent and discover new and valuable truths that will bring healing to us and our world. And in every moment of crisis, I can build my own unique “microwave,” which will radiate heat and light into my home and my surroundings.
There’s a fascinating detail from Hebrew: The same word for crisis — मuhber, mashber — also means birth chair, the seat in which a child was born in ancient times. In Hebrew, “crisis” is not a fall, but a place of birth. A pressure point so strong that something new forces its way out.
When you reread the story of Percy Spencer – the accidental inventor of the microwave – this idea becomes incredibly powerful. Because what he experienced wasn’t just a fairy tale: it was a real rocker. He was working, and the chocolate accidentally melted, an uncomfortable, annoying, almost absurd moment…but he saw in that ‘melting’ a possible birth.
While someone else saw a problem, he saw an opportunity. What seemed like an accident became an invention that changed the world.
This is precisely the logic of the Mashbar: the discomfort that presses is the same pressure that generates something new. Things that melt in our pockets, situations that fall apart, moments that seem like a mistake… could actually be the seat where a new idea is about to be born, a new version of ourselves, or a new way of life.
And perhaps, like Percy Spencer, every “melt” in our lives could become our very own microwave: an unexpected invention that radiates heat, light and something new into the world.