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It will be some time before the department stores have Radaranges. The present model would have to sell for twenty- five hundred dollars a unit, if the Raytheon people were willing to sell it at all, and they haven't even got around to drawing up plans for a home model, We were escorted into the Roosevelt kitchens by Louis Del-Coma, assistant to the general manager of the hotel, who informed us that the bulk of the hotel's cooking is still being done on regular, old-fashioned stoves but that the Radaranges have been very useful in emergencies. Faced with an unexpected run on baked potatoes, Del-Coma said, the chefs turn calmly to the Radaranges, which can bake a potato in four and a half minutes, as against an hour in a conventional oven. The Roosevelt Radaranges stand about five feet high, are about two feet wide and two feet deep, and have a control panel of comforting simplicity: an on-off button, a high-low switch, and a five-minute timer, calibrated in seconds. The oven is of stainless steel and has a steel door perforated like acoustic tile, so that a cook can see in. The ranges produce energy the way a radar transmitter does, but it is directed into the ovens, for cooking purposes, instead of out into space, for detection purposes. The heart of the device is the magnetron, a tube of very high frequency and very high cost, which sends out microwaves at 2,450 megacycles, spang in the middle of the band the Federal Communications Commission has assigned for cookery and other industrial transmissions. Most affected by that particular foods are frequency. They are, in fact, practically given a nervous breakdown by it, and the heat that cooks them is a product of friction among their agitated molecules. One odd thing is that while water boils so promptly, paper, which has molecules that react to a different frequency, is unaffected, and if you put a paper cup full of water in a Radarange the water will all boil away, but the cup will remain undamaged. Metal reflects the microwaves, so the oven itself never warms up; glass and china conduct the waves, so plates and casseroles stay cool while the food on or in them gets piping hot. Mr. Del-Coma turned on one of the Radaranges, set the timer for four and a half minutes, and put a large, unpeeled potato in the oven, on a plate. The potato immediately began to sizzle and jiggle. "You see how fast it is," Del- Coma said. "As a matter of fact, it's too fast for some foods. Eggs, for instance. One of the boys put a whole egg in a Radarange one day and it blew up with a terrific pop." When the oven shut itself off, Del-Coma removed the plate and potato. The plate was cool, but the potato was too hot to touch. Del-Coma slit it open, tucked in a pat of butter, and handed us a fork.When it had cooled enough to eat, we sampled it and found it to be done to a turn and fluffy-the best baked potato we've had since our Second-Class Boy Scout days. Then Del-Coma cooked us a hamburger patty, in two minutes. It couldn't have been better. "The Radarange cooks foods evenly all the way through," he said, "and this means people are accustomed to. If we're cooking a mackerel fillet, we get around that problem by using a special seasoning, which has a coloring effect. Steaks cook perfectly in these ranges but end up looking gray. Our solution to that is to sear them for a few seconds in a broiler, then put them in the Radarange. We cook a ten-ounce steak forty seconds if you order it rare, forty-five seconds for medium, and fifty seconds for well-done. Up in Massachusetts, there's a quick-order place with a Radarange, and when they get a takeout order for a hamburger, they put the raw meat in a bun, smear on mustard, wrap the sandwich in wax paper, put it in a paper bag, and toss the whole works in the oven. They say it tastes fine."

Several whimsical couples in evening dress showed up, took a turn on the waxed concrete, and went back to their waiting cars. We can't be sure about it until we hear from Lucius Beebe, but we're afraid it's Being Done. We resented these intruders fiercely, and so did all the other people to whom the Mall belongs. But to the really simple and pure in heart (which takes in all our readers) we recommend at least one trip up to the Mall this summer. If you don't want to dance, you can close your eyes and listen to the sound —sweeter than anything, sadder than anything which is a blend of work—relief dance music, leather shuffling on concrete, and thousands of very young people singing as they waltz.