Could the housewife be eliminated entirely?
That was the question asked by TODAY anchor Dave Garroway on April 12, 1957, when he and "TODAY Girl" Helen O'Connell received a demonstration of a "baffling gadget" known as the XPC-1 or Experimental Cooker #1. The device (which appears to be the size of a car), was a pre-cursor of sorts to the modern-day microwave oven, combining a freezer and an electronic oven in such a way that "all the housewife has to do is keep the freezer loaded, push these buttons to select a meal when she wants to eat."
Could this new machine be the way of the future? Garroway predicted, "They used to say, 'what's a home without a mother?', now they'll be saying 'what's a home without an engineer?'"