Microwave oven
The development of the cavity magnetron in the UK made possible the production of electromagnetic waves of a small enough wavelength (microwaves). American engineer Percy Spencer is generally credited with inventing the modern microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the "Radarange", it was first sold in 1946. Raytheon later licensed its patents for a home-use microwave oven that was first introduced by Tappan in 1955, but these units were still too large and expensive for general home use. Sharp Corporation introduced the first microwave oven with a turntable between 1964 and 1966. The countertop microwave oven was first introduced in 1967 by the Amana Corporation. After Sharp introduced low-cost microwave ovens affordable for residential use in the late 1970s, their use spread into commercial and residential kitchens around the world. In addition to their use in cooking food, types of microwave ovens are used for heating in many industrial processes.
Solvay Process Company
The Hazard family invested in an affiliated business, the Semet-Solvay Company, formed in 1895. Louis Semet, a relative of Ernest and Alfred Solvay, had developed with the brothers a coke oven designed to recover valuable materials formerly wasted in the coking process. In 1892 the Solvay Process Company built the first of the ovens in America, forming the Semet-Solvay Company three years later to build and operate them. Coke plants were located in Ashland, Kentucky; Buffalo, New York; Detroit, Michigan; and Ironton, Ohio. Semet-Solvay operated its own mines in West Virginia, providing much of its coal supply.