Dinner's A Phone Call Away; Oven Gets Things Cooking When You're Far From Home

It took a tough man to make a tender chicken, but it was a hungryfather who devised a way to roast the bird while standing on a ballfield waiting for his kids to finish practice.

David Mansbery, an Ohio entrepreneur with two sons, invented anInternet-linked oven to get a meal on the table sooner. His"intelligent" appliance refrigerates food until commanded to cook it,by phone, computer or PDA. It's not the only advance in kitchensthese days, but it's the only one that qualifies as sci-fi come true.

After more than $10 million and 12 years in development at theTMIO company, the first 200ConnectIo Intelligent Ovens were shippedto distributors this week from a Chattanooga, Tenn., factory. It's acutting-edge product that hopes to jump-start that beleaguered riteof family life: mealtime.

"We all eat, we all have time problems," Mansbery says."Appliances have not kept up with changes in our lifestyle."

The TMIO president and chief executive celebrated his firstproduction run by hawking the oven to home builders at theInternational Builders' Show in Orlando. A demonstration model withbrushed stainless steel front and dual-oven capacity is on displaythrough today in a showcase called NextGen Home.

At $8,699, Internet-linked ovens will make their way into luxurydevelopments long before the technology reaches Best Buy. But thecentral idea -- that supper should be ready when you are -- is socompelling that only a cavalier manufacturer would ignore itspursuit.

Over the cell phone he uses to start chicken roasting at home,Mansbery made remote-control cuisine sound as easy as punching "S"for souffle. There's no complex instruction manual. The oven uses"embedded Web technology" developed for space shuttles, but homechefs don't need degrees in rocket science. They simply prepare thefood and put it in the refrigerator-oven to chill. After logging onto a Web site and giving a PIN code, they instruct the oven when tostart and how long to cook. They can also tap into recipes -- fromthe next room or a continent away. Messages can be left on an LCDscreen on the oven door. The cooking circuits can be programmed forthree days' worth of meals, a feature Mansbery calls Sabbath mode.

Mansbery was in the natural gas drilling and marketing businessback in 1994, and developed an indoor baseball academy inBrecksville, Ohio, when he set his sights on an earlier, hassle-freemeal.

"I was hungry," he said. "I wasn't getting dinner."

He was also motivated by an observation he attributes to BillGates: that kitchens had not progressed. His first prototype was amicro-refrigerator in a microwave. Command technology evolved withhelp from NASA and Sun Microsystems. In 1998 the oven was unveiledin public. It did not start a digital kitchen revolution.

"The world really was not ready yet," Mansbery says. "We neededother things to happen -- the Internet to develop, cell phones tobecome popular, wireless technology in the home."

The breakthrough came in 2002 at the annual tech-world convergenceknown as the Consumer Electronics Show. Techies got the point of theprototype, called Tonight's Menu Intelligent Oven (now shortened toTMIO), and immediately wanted to know where to buy one, Mansberysays. He pushed ahead with a premium dual-wall oven and won an awardfor innovation at the following year's show.

So far, so good. But in the $23 billion appliance business,advances can take decades to work their way into the mainstream. Sub-Zero developed a built-in refrigerator in the 1950s, based on workits founder did for Frank Lloyd Wright, but mass-market manufacturershave only recently slimmed down models to fit flush with standardcabinets. Highly efficient induction cooktops, in which an electriccoil under glass agitates iron molecules in pots, are being offeredby a host of elite makers. Westinghouse debuted an inductionprototype 35 years ago.

LCD screens are proliferating. New from LG Electronics is arefrigerator with a cable-ready 15-inch screen for watching TV andDVDs as part of a digital command center on the door. Whirlpool puta screen on the front of a fantasy microwave, making it theoreticallypossible to click from TV to that exploding popcorn bag. A multimediascreen on an experimental ventilation hood by the Faber company waseven more unexpected. The desirability of making phone calls, viewingmovies and checking recipes on the hood over the stove is untested.

At last year's builders' show, exotica included a $1,400 oven fromSharp, which promised to steam the fat out of food. Hitachi offerednanotechnology to pummel particles off plates in the dishwasher.

This year, GE introduced its "Kitchen of the Future." Appliancesare shown communicating with each other and, to a limited extent,with owners by phone. Sensors in the refrigerator report what's instock and what a recipe requires. The oven cooks faster, with halogenlights and what GE calls Trivection -- a currently availablecombination of conventional, microwave and convection technology. Thedishwasher has a soap reservoir that needs refilling onlyoccasionally and automatically releases the right amount ofdetergent. Refrigerators can chill wine and thaw meat faster.

"Design is cumulative," says Marc Hottenroth, GE's industrialdesign leader. "As we learn new things and try new things, we canprogress."

A GE video shows a couple after a party using voice commands tostart the cooktop on self-clean, but that's one of the featuresdesigners have yet to develop. Mansbery approached some of the largeappliance manufacturers as he proceeded with his cooling-cookingoven. He says one executive told him, "David, we just bend sheetmetal, we don't make them smarter." Walking the aisles in Orlando, hesays, he spotted touch screens, but no attempt to alter the purposeof existing machines.

"Basically, we've created a new appliance," Mansbery says.

The next application for the command-and-control technology willbe outside the home, Mansbery says. He believes it could help deliverhot meals to troops, as well as allow doctors to monitor heartpatients or even conduct long-distance surgery.

"There has to be a compelling reason to apply technology," hesays. "What we try to do is to try for the betterment of mankind."