Once I was walking past a slatted fence, and I noticed that I could see through the fence as long as I was walking, but if I stopped, I saw nothing but fence. I realized the same principle would apply to the protective metal screen in the window of a microwave oven: if you could vibrate the screen, it would disappear into a blur, and food would be much more visible.
After some research, I found out I wasn't the first one to think of this. Two Indianapolis inventors were issued a patent (4,054,768) on the idea back in 1977.
The screen can be made to vibrate (as in the door 12) or to spin (as in the viewing port 13) to make the food more visible.
Visibility to the interior of a microwave oven is improved through a microwave shield that can be driven with periodic motion to increase the visibility through the shield, with such driving being accomplished by an electromechanical vibrator, a manual impulse given to the shield that is spring mounted, a power take-off from a conventional motor driven microwaver mixer, a separately motor driven cam, or the like.
Unfortunately, the idea never seems to have caught on. When it comes to microwaveable food, customers might not want to spend too much time looking at what they are about to eat.
Comments