Michael A. Terrell wrote:
wrote:
I've read that the very first microwave ovens had no interlock, you
could open the door with them cooking. Basic switches were retrofitted
following injuries.
I find that damn hard to believe, since they were developed by
Litton. Litton had a lot of experience in manufacturing RADAR and
Microwave transmitter parts as well as the safety requirements. These
fields have extreme safety requirements. The RADAR equipment I worked
on had multiple interlocks. The 2 MW pulse RADAR at Ft Rucker had three
sets of keyed interlocks that shut down different parts of the
transmitters. You had to remove the key to open each gate as you went
up the steps to the antenna on the roof. You kept the three keys in
your pocket while you were up there, and had to lock the gates in the
right sequence to turn the system back on.
What youre describing is obviously a very long way removed from the
first cooker. At the first witnessed microwave cooking event the cooker
had no door and was pointed toward the audience, but this was not a
commercial oven.
Cookers were a logical development on from dishes that could cook
pigeons, and were open and routinely rf irradiated the people on board.
Moving to 2.4GHz would make a lot more energy absorbed and turn to
heat, hence the burn risk. Until then no-one had any reason to believe
there was any reason not to expose themselves to microwaves.
NT