The Chocolate Bar

1. Why is there a piece of war radar sitting in your kitchen?
2. Because a radar engineer named Percy Spencer stood next to a magnetron and the chocolate in his pocket melted.
3. He tried popcorn. It popped all over the lab. He tried an egg. It exploded in a colleague's face.
4. The first oven was the size of a fridge and cost more than a car. Now it reheats your coffee.
5. What's the last thing you reheated?

A 1940s radar lab in tungsten light: a humming magnetron on the bench, an oscilloscope, a radar dish outside the window. Percy Spencer stands beside the magnetron and the chocolate bar in his coat pocket melts down his coat. A paper bag of kernels pops into a snowstorm of popcorn across the lab; an egg in a kettle bursts in a colleague's face. Then a kitchen: the first oven, a steel cabinet the size of a fridge, beside a small countertop box reheating a mug of coffee.