Shows A - Z : How's That Work? : Food Dehydrator, Sauna, Plasma TV : Home & Garden Television

Food Dehydrator, Sauna, Plasma TV
The food dehydrator, conceived in the early 1900s, was a small wooden hillside structure heated by a fire built underneath. Warm air from the fire flowed upward, extracting moisture from food laid out on wooden trays. The air then escaped through a vent in the roof, carrying the food's moisture with it. Next, the sauna has its roots in Finland. In fact, it's how early Finnish settlers first bathed more than 2,000 years ago. During the 17th century, saunas evolved into freestanding wooden buildings. These hot boxes still used open fires and they were such a fire hazard that building a sauna too close to other buildings was illegal. Finally, the plasma television had its beginnings in 1964 at the University of Illinois. That's when Dr. Donald Bitzer and research engineer Gene Slottow had the crazy notion to use electricity and neon gases to create high-quality graphic images on a screen. A man named Larry Weber, one of Bitzer's former students, continued to push ahead with that notion. As electronics improved and desire for high-definition TV increased, Weber's gamble paid off. Today plasma screens are every serious TV viewer's video dream.

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