The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 20, 1995
Filed:
Feb. 16, 1994
Harry F Smith, Newtown, CT (US);
Intellectual Property Development Associates of Connecticut, Inc., Trumbull, CT (US);
Abstract
A cooking device (10), such as a microwave oven, is provided with a sensor 16) that is responsive to an indicia (18) associated with a food that is to be heated or cooked. For example, the indicia may be a bar code (UPC barcode) that is provided as a part of the packaging of the food. In one embodiment of this invention the cooking device has a controller (14) that is responsive to the indicia being detected by the sensor for looking up in a memory (26) a stored cooking program that has one or more program steps. The controller is responsive to the cooking program to activate and operate a cooking chamber, such as a microwave oven compartment, in accordance with the program steps of the cooking program that is identified by the indicia. The cooking program steps can each include a predetermined cooking time, cooking temperature, and power level setting. A cooking program step can also be a message to an operator, for example a message that indicates that operator intervention is required before cooking can continue. The indicia can be used to identify a cooking program to be looked up. The indicia can also be used to convey cooking variables (time, temperature, etc.) and also constants, such as an identification of a prestored message to be displayed to the user. The indicia can also encode a specific and explicit set of cooking instructions for entry into and execution by the cooking device controller.