Instead of flying through space and saving the world like the other Lyons Maid pops, Fab did nothing more than keep girls cool—and give them early experience with torpedo-shaped objects, of course.

Not until the trained engineer attacks the problem of housekeeping will these feminine ravings against servants and housekeeping difficulties be stilled . . . The kitchen engineer's first task will be the simplification of cooking . . . If letters are conveyed almost to your very door by the pneumatic tube, why should not the same means supply you with breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Imagine a kitchen of unprecedented immensity, a building comparable with a modern hotel in size, a place where an army of cooks is busily engaged in roasting meats, in preparing vegetables, in concocting entrancing sauces, in mixing salads, in stirring dreamy desserts. Imagine pneumatic tubes leading from the delivery floor of that mighty building to thousands of homes and apartments. Seven o'clock comes. Carriers three feet long, divided into compartments for soup, meat, sauces, vegetables and clean dishes, are slipped into the throats of myriad tubes. The covers are thrown down and with a swish the carriers are blown by compressed air to their destination. A few minutes later they are discharged into the kitchens of as many dwellings. The single maid of the household serves the dinner thus pneumatically received.

"Does this imply that the city will cook for the people?" he continued, "That is exactly what will happen. What is more, soup cooks, steak broilers, and coffee specialists will be elected very much as Aldermen will be elected"—political gridlock thus ensuring the starvation deaths of city dwellers everywhere, a cynical 21st-century type might add.

Kaempffert's letter to the editor was his second attempt at getting this plan off the ground; you can read his earlier article here.

Library of Congress image no. LC-USW3- 032351-E [P&P]

Size, for one thing. We're used to the petite but powerful microwave ovens that nestle on our kitchen counters, but early models were behemoths that varied in size "from a unit smaller than a home refrigerator to one somewhat larger," according to the New York Times in 1946. Pictured is one of the more compact models from 1947; a demonstration model from 1949 was five feet high, two feet wide, and two feet deep.

Price was another problem. In 1949, the magnetron tube alone cost $500 to manufacture (roughly $4400 today), thus the first generation of microwave ovens were marketed for restaurant and industrial use. A Radarange for the home was introduced in 1955 but at $1,875 for a tabletop model and $2,975 for a wall console ($14,500 and $23,000, respectively, in today's currency), it was prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-heeled consumers.

There were other drawbacks, too. The Times noted in 1946 that baked goods were crustless and roasts "gray rather than brown." But it was fast, fast, fast! Microwaves cooked steak dinners in 35 seconds, hot dogs in buns in 15 seconds, and baked gingerbread from batter in 26 seconds. A 1962 Raytheon ad imagined what this meant to the harried housewife:

Four unexpected guests for dinner? Mother better set the extra places at table first or the food will be ready before she is. Popping four large potatoes in to bake will give her just two minutes before they are steaming, fluffy, ready to serve. And the juicy, tender, mouth-watering sirloin steak with which she wants to impress her guests will be done to a turn in nothing flat. Twenty seconds to be exact!

Even so, sales didn't take off until the mid-1970s, when technological advances led to lower prices and more compact ovens—and the American public learned that the microwave was best suited for reheating leftovers and frozen foods than cooking gourmet meals.