Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
TV dinner
The TV dinner is an American invention developed by Gerry Thomas in 1954. Thomas, who worked for Swanson foods in Omaha, Nebraska, wanted to develop a way to use leftover frozen turkey meat from Thanksgiving. Making use of aluminum serving dishes, used also at that time to serve dinners on aircraft, he packaged leftover turkey with frozen peas and potatoes, each in its own compartment. The trays were useful: the entire dinner could be removed from the outer packaging as a unit; the aluminum tray could be heated directly in the oven without any extra baking dishes; and one could eat the meal directly out of the same tray.
The original TV Dinner sold for 98 cents in 1954 and had a first production estimate of 5,000 dinners for the first year. Swanson ended up selling more than 10 million of the dinners the first year they were in production. In 1962, Swanson stopped calling these frozen dinners "TV Dinners," and several other companies had entered the market. The name, however, has stuck.
TV Dinners were later celebrated in a song of the same name by ZZ Top on their album Eliminator.
Modern day TV dinners tend to come in microwave-safe containers, and also tend to have a larger selection of dinner types. These dinners, also known as microwave meals, can be purchased at almost every supermarket, and several companies still sell them for about $1.
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