Inventions That Changed Everything

In 1945, Percy Spencer of Raytheon was working near an active radar set when he noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. This happy accident led directly to the development of the microwave oven.

The Zenith Space Command remote used ultrasonic sound — tiny aluminum rods inside the remote were struck like a xylophone, sending inaudible high-frequency tones to the TV set. It had no batteries and needed no wire.

The first Polaroid Land Camera, Model 95, produced a sepia-toned print in about 60 seconds — a sensation at the time when most photos required days at a drugstore lab. The 60-second promise became the Polaroid brand's calling card.

Lazlo Biro was a Hungarian journalist who was frustrated by the way fountain pen ink smeared on newsprint. Watching fast-drying printer's ink gave him the idea for a pen with a tiny rotating ball at its tip.

After a walk in the Alps in 1941, de Mestral examined under a microscope the burr seeds clinging to his dog's coat and his own trousers. He saw tiny hooks catching on loops of fabric — the exact principle he then engineered into Velcro.

The Regency TR-1, released in October 1954, was the first mass-market transistor radio, built with transistors supplied by Texas Instruments. Sony came later with its TR-55 in 1955 but quickly dominated the market through the late 1950s.

The 1950 Zenith Lazy Bones was connected to the television by a long cable — simple but effective, though viewers kept tripping over the cord. That hazard pushed Zenith to develop a wireless solution, leading to the Space Command in 1956.

Although microwave ovens existed in commercial kitchens from the early 1950s, the countertop home models did not become widely affordable until the 1970s — especially after Amana's Radarange (1967) was followed by competing brands that drove prices down sharply.

Georges de Mestral coined 'Velcro' by combining the French words 'velours' (velvet) and 'crochet' (hook). The soft loops reminded him of velvet; the stiff grabbing side was the hook.

Land's first major invention, in the 1930s, was a cheap polarizing plastic sheet he called Polaroid — used in sunglasses and car headlights to cut glare. The Polaroid Corporation was named for this film long before the famous instant camera arrived.

Japan — led by Sony and a host of smaller manufacturers — overtook American producers by the late 1950s, flooding the world market with affordable, well-made transistor radios. It was one of the first major examples of Japanese consumer electronics dominance.

At high altitudes the lower air pressure caused fountain pen ink to leak badly, ruining flight logs and navigation charts. The RAF and later the USAAF issued ballpoint pens to aircrew because the pressurized ink cartridge worked perfectly at altitude.

Polacolor film, launched in 1963, let Polaroid camera owners pull out a full-color print in about 60 seconds. It was a marvel of chemical engineering and helped cement Polaroid's place as one of the most innovative companies of its era.

NASA adopted Velcro in the early 1960s primarily to keep tools, equipment, and clothing from floating around the cabin in weightlessness. Its use in the space program gave Velcro enormous publicity and helped make it a household name.

The original 1947 Radarange stood roughly 6 feet tall, weighed around 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000 — the equivalent of well over $60,000 today. It was sold to restaurants and ocean liners, not homes. The countertop kitchen model was still decades away.