Yes folks, thats right, a 25 year old Amana Touchmatic 2 Radarange
(“Captain Oveur: Roger, would you check the radar range?
Roger Murdok: walks to the Radarange (microwave) and pushes the button. Touches the food inside Just a few more seconds captain” - the movie Airplane ).
Yeah, when was the last time you heard someone call a microwave a Radarange? Anyways… how can this 25+ year old microwave still work? It belongs to my grandparents and they received it as a gift for their 25th anniversary. The only thing thats ever happend to it that needed repairing was the light blew out a couple times. And another thing, the inside of the “radarange” is 100% metal (I’m not sure what kind… aluminum maybe?). How does this work? Is it because the metal is grounded or something?
So anyways, how the heck does this microwave still work (flawlessly I might add… except for the lack of power that newer microwaves have)? Any new microwave you buy only lasts for maybe 5 or 6 years… some of the better ones, 10. But how can this last for 25?? It’s insane! What is this world comming to?(maybe I should start a thread about that in Great Debates… on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t)
Oh, I forgot to mention that I know of at least one other person that owns one of these Amana Touchmatic Radaranges. His works perfectly too!
Why the hell cant they make 'em like they used to? I would spend another 200 dollars on a microwave if I knew it was gonna last another 20 years. [mumble] stupid devious electronic appliance CEOs that want to make you buy more of their POS microwaves [/mumble]
My dad used to have a Hotpoint refrigerator at his office. We’re not entirely sure, but it dated from the '48 to '52 era, as I recall.
Worked great, never needed a single repair in the many decades we had it (not original owners) and the only drawback is the fact the little internal “ice cream box” frosted over heavily, requiring regular defrosting.
Had the old latching doors that we all saw in the “home hazards” movies waaay back in elementary. He eventually needed more cold space, so sold the Hotpoint to a friend who stuck it in his shop. As far as I know, it still works.
Buddy of mine paid $1,200 for a fancy model from Sears three years ago. It fully and completely come-get-this-smoking-carcass failed within eighteen months. Go fig.
Raytheon made the first microwave ovens, iirc. Litton was another early entrant. They were extremely powerful, as they used military spec magnetrons and a baked potato would take less than a minute. Gradually manufacturers realized it wasn’t necessary to use such expensive components just to nuke beanie weenies and boil water and the prices went down considerably.
The only real safety measure on a microwave is a switch that shuts it off if you open the door. They’ve all had those from pretty much the beginning, I believe.
A microwave is just a magnetron (a little thing that spins around and makes radio waves, about the best way to describe how it works is that it does to electricty what blowing over the open end of a bottle does to sound), a waveguide (which is just a metal tube that the radio waves bounce down through) and the box it’s in, and of course some sort of timer to turn it on and off. Magnetrons were used in radar sets in world war II, and those certainly lasted a lot longer than 5 years. It’s only when you make them dirt cheap that they don’t last. These days radar sets use travelling wave tubes, but those are way too pricey for a home microwave.
The box is always metal, even in a modern microwave. Modern microwave boxes are coated with something (some kind of paint maybe?) to prevent the metal from oxidizing and make it easier to clean up when your spaghetti explodes because you cooked it too long. Because the walls are a big flat piece of metal, they act more like a plane than an antenna and the radio waves just mostly bounce off of them. It’s a big enough piece of metal that any eddy currents induced don’t do much, compared to say a fork in a microwave, which not only acts more like a receiving antenna because of its shape but also has less metal inside to disperse the eddy currents through (so it makes nice sparks and gets really hot).
The door on a microwave is covered in a metal screen, because to radio waves any piece of metal with holes in it that are smaller than the wavelength of the radio wave might as well be a solid piece of metal. A chain link fence looks pretty much the same as a solid piece of metal to a cell phone, same principle.
You should always have food in a microwave if you turn it on, because otherwise the radio waves could just bounce all over the box and with nothing to absorb them, could bounce back into the magnetron and damage it. And, as much fun as steel wool and CDs are, you really shouldn’t put anything metal inside a microwave either.
We just got rid of our 25 year old microwave. It crapped out on us once, but my husband took it to work and had some guy fix it. We’re probably glowing in the dark from that one, but that little sucker worked for another 5 years!
my parents bejam microwave only crapped out last year, and they bought that in 82 when we moved house. thats only problem was the lightbulb blowing out too. a good twenty years for around a £100.
we had a sharp VCR from even before that, one of the first front loaders, and that lasted a good 16-7 years with only minor repairs.
dont they build stuff to break anyway so you have to go get new ones? (which makes sense if the manufacturer has the market monopoly, but with the amount of household appliances on the market, surely brand loyalty would be increased if your stuff never broke for most of your lifespan)
capitalism eh? guess they dont make em like they used to…
:o
My Goldstar microwave qualifies for a Bar Mitzvah (13) this year. My wife want to get a new one. I say, Why? And if we do, this one goes into the basement till the new one craps out.
My parents still have their microwave that was purchased sometime in 1981. It has analog (dial) controls and an actuall bell that dings when the timer runs out (not an electronic beep).
I have a microwave that my sister gave to me about eight years ago. I think it’s somewhere around 14-15 years old. It’s still working just fine :knocks on wood:.
The shielding in them is probably better than what’s in a modern microwave. They used big thick pieces of metal back then. These days they use as little metal as possible to keep costs down.
And, for a side note, if your microwave suddenly starts cooking things MUCH FASTER than normal, be prepared to get a new one. Perhaps it was a design issue, but the way I’ve seen magnetrons burn out in the past involved a power spike for reasons I couldn’t understand.
Because when you are only selling 100 microwaves a year, it pays for you to have a “reputation” and a good feel.
When your selling 100 million a year, a dollar saved in materials is 100 million extra revenue and screw the “reputation” unless something horribly tragic happens. All the microwave manufacturers are pretty much the same in the consumers eyes.
You know what’s really instructive on pricing for old appliances? (Well, for Americans…)
The Game Show Network.
I love the damn thing, 'cause with every prize there’s always a then-current dollar figure attached. (Besides, where else can you find a repository of the oevre of Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and George Gobel?)
A 25-year-old Amana Radarange would’ve been made in 1977. I saw a 1975 Hollywood Squares that valued a Tappan model at, IIRC, $325. Of course, that was probably list price and not retail - but let’s assume the retail was actually about $200. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, that’s be $666.54 in today’s money.
Nowadays you never need spend more than about $100 for a decent standalone model, or $200 for a monster you can use to nuke your mother-in-law and her Pekingese. Just last fall I had my kitchen redone with one that’s combined into a range hood - for about $275.
And they still hold up decently - not 25 years, but 7-8 is reasonable. So instead of $600 once, you spend $100 three times. Looks like a reasonable trade-off to me.