Creating the perfect Thanksgiving meal can require spending hours in the kitchen. The dizzying amount of sides, dressings and desserts that some families prepare can force even the best cooks to forget about one of the most important staples of any Thanksgiving plate: the turkey!

But thanks to Eugene Beals, you’ll know exactly when your turkey is ready. Beals played an important role in the invention of the pop-up turkey timer, the red and white piece of plastic usually found in the thickest part of your turkey. 

Beals was born and raised in Quincy, and served in World War II as a medic in San Francisco. After the war, he remained in California and served as manager of the state’s turkey advisory board. The advisory board noted that they received an awful lot of complaints from the public that they were overcooking their turkeys. In response, the board put their heads together and came up with the idea to create an internal ‘timer’ that would alert the cook when the turkey reached the right temperature.

Beals helped test and perfect the technology for the timer, requiring countless hours of baking turkeys. In the end, Beals settled on a design that would go on to be placed in over 2 billion turkeys and counting. 

So when you open the oven door on Thursday and notice the small red button has ‘popped’ on your turkey timer, don’t forget to say a little thank you to Eugene Beals.

Learn more:
Read more about Eugene Beals here