Gerry Thomas, 83, creator of TV Dinners, dies

PHOENIX — Gerry Thomas, who changed the way Americans eat — for better or worse — with his invention of the TV Dinner during the baby boom years, has died at 83.

Mr. Thomas, who died of cancer at a Phoenix hospice Monday, was a salesman for Omaha, Neb.-based C.A. Swanson and Sons in 1954 when he got the idea of packaging frozen meals in disposable aluminum-foil trays, divided into compartments to keep the foods from mixing. He also gave the product its singular name.

The first Swanson TV Dinner — turkey with cornbread dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes and buttered peas — sold for about $1 and could be cooked in 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Ten million sold in the first year of national distribution.

It was fast and convenient, and fit nicely on a TV tray in the living room, so diners didn't have to drag themselves away from their favorite television show.

Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said the TV Dinner "started a change in American eating habits bigger than any change in culinary history since the discovery of fire and cooked foods."

The TV Dinner fit in with societal changes at the time, when more women were entering the work force and had less time to cook, he said.

In a 1999 Associated Press interview, Mr. Thomas recalled that the inspiration for the TV Dinner came when he was visiting a distributor, spotted a metal tray and was told it was developed for an experiment in the preparation of hot meals on airliners.

"It was just a single-compartment tray with foil," he recalled. "I asked if I could borrow it and stuck it in the pocket of my overcoat."

He said he came up with a three-compartment tray because "I spent five years in the service, so I knew what a mess kit was. You could never tell what you were eating because it was all mixed together."

The TV Dinner drew "hate mail from men who wanted their wives to cook from scratch like their mothers did," Mr. Thomas said, but it got him a bump in pay to $300 a month and a $1,000 bonus.

"I didn't complain. A thousand dollars was a lot of money back then," he said.

Mr. Thomas relished the credit he got for his invention and even kept the original prototype tray and packaging for the TV Dinner, said his wife, Susan.

But that didn't mean he ate them.

"He was gourmet cook," Susan Thomas said. "He never ate the TV Dinners."