We all marvel at the new innovations that make our life a little more worth living. The microwave oven is one, even though about the only thing that I find that makes it worth the space that it takes up, is for heating up a TV dinner or baking a sweet potato. Surely there must be a lot of people that find them to be a real time and energy saver, if so, that makes me happy.

I don’t find them to be such a new and mysterious device, because during World War II, while I was still working for the Mutual Boiler Insurance Company, I used to inspect a rubber processing plant in Cincinnati where we had some Air Compressors insured. In that same plant was a just recently installed, endless belt machine that was shrouded with signs that warned people about getting too close, because it could give off X-Rays, or words to that effect. We did not have the machine insured but I asked enough questions and snooped around enough, to find out that its purpose was to cure the rubber that passed under a series of micro-wave tubes that greatly reduced the time and energy that was consumed by the conventional ovens and substantially reduced the cost, per unit, of the finished product.