Thanksgiving is coming up and those folks without a meat thermometer in the kitchen, the pop-up timer in your turkey serves as a way to tell you to get that bird out of the oven before it turns to sawdust. (We were once convinced that our host actually cooked a phoenix that had decided to end its life cycle in the oven, thus reducing itself to ash.) And guess what? The inventor, Eugene Beals, was born and raised right here in Illinois. We decided to take a closer look at one of these things to see how it works. Now, a simple google search revealed this completely awesome diagram which taught us exactly how the timer works... but to us that was like looking at a diagram of a DVD player when there was a perfectly good one in front of us we could open up and destroy. Basically, we wanted to cut this thing open. But first, some history. more ›