During World War II Thomas was a U.S. Army intelligence officer, and was awarded the Bronze Star for his work in breaking Japanese codes. After the war he went to work as a salesman for C.A. Swanson & Sons. In 1953, the company way overbought turkey for Thanksgiving; it had half a million pounds left over. What to do?
Thomas came up with the solution: package it with side dishes as frozen dinners in aluminum trays. He even came up with a name for it: “TV Dinner”. (“If it were today, we’d probably call it the ‘digital dinner’,” he said in 1999.) It was an immediate success: in 1954 Swanson sold 10 million of the dinners — at 98 cents each — in part because they took “only” half an hour to heat up. The company quickly expanded the line to other meals, which Thomas tested on his own family.
In the late 1960s he helped adapt the meal to a new kitchen appliance: the microwave oven, which cut prep time to about 5 minutes. Thomas died July 18 from cancer at a hospice in Arizona. He was 83.
Note: “Only” 98 cents in April 1954 is the equivalent of $11.95 in February 2026.