Induction – A Idea whose Time Has Come… Again, and Again, and Again

Is Induction Cooking Ready to go Mainstream?” asked the New York Times last month. An induction range uses a rapidly varying magnetic field to induce electric currents in steel pots and pans – causing them to get hot very rapidly. Induction cooking appears to be coming back into vogue… again.

In 1944, John Campbell wrote an article for Popular Science predicting induction heating – already in use for industrial processes – would be applied to cooking. After World War II however, the major electromagnetic advance in the culinary arts was the development of the microwave oven – rapidly eclipsing induction heating. In the early 1980’s there appears to have been yet another resurgence, judging by this 1984 Popular Science item.

Will induction cooking break out into the mass market? Only time will tell.

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