There is no way the design took two years and required supercomputers
146The math is so complex that research into Pringles with ridges was considered a national secret and it was classified. DARPA was rumored to have provided partial funding.
36Like Velcro and GPS, Pringle research came straight out of the US military-industrial complex, as a byproduct of the flying saucer research conducted at Area 51.
1
Its design took 2 years and required the use of supercomputers
[citation needed]
96It is quite hard to track down but here's it being reported by the head of modelling at P&G in 2006
https://www.hpcwire.com/2006/05/05/high_performance_potato_chips/
46
wonder what kinda of supercomputer they used in 1968
66- Bender
5Challenge accepted *unzips
1
A Cray would be my guess. Possibly even a CDC 7600 running at a whopping 36 MHz if they were really on the bleeding edge (it came out that same year).
15"That looks about right."
1
With the stuff about 'super computers', this seems more like a shitpost than a science meme.
55Completely leaves out that you can use two of them to make yourself look like a duck
47And it's cheaper than lip fillers.
4
What “supercomputer” did they use in 1968 to make the chip shape when Pringles were invented?
Edit:
My digging around has resulted in this find:
46A real human bean
1810 vacuum tubes
17ENIAC was built in 1945. And Cray was building supercomputers in the 60s
3I understand that there were “supercomputers” for the day, but I don’t think they called them that. They were just computers. I want to know exactly which one was used to design a reconstituted potato chip.
6My digging around has resulted in this find:
1
I guess they needed it to mathematically design and calculate with it but idk
3My digging around has resulted in this find:
1
Somehow they also designed them so the tube goes stale roughly 2 minutes after opening it. Also the lovely texture reminiscent of sawdust. Truly a marvel of engineering.
37I don't think you're supposed to eat the tube, shouldn't matter that it goes stale.
74"Once you pop you can't stop" is actually a warning about this
5
Personally, it always decreased satisfaction that it breaks unpredictably, because I'd get crumbs everywhere. In particular, the shape also hinders putting them far enough into your mouth to catch the crumbs.
Definitely prefer chips which are just sliced potatoes. Them being a naturally grown structure makes them unpredictable enough for my taste.32I really thought everyone was eating them entirely and in stacks of 5 ...
16No, the shape hinders putting the far enough into your mouth. Luckily, I've got a big one.
Wait...
14I was fitting a whole upside down Pringle along my tongue when I was a kid.
1
Also abot 10-15% of thr chips crumble at the bottom to cushion the rest of the pringles
15This meme is wrong and likely based on a Reddit post that is itself wrong.
“TIL that in the '50s P&G used a supercomputer for designing Pringles…”
The only source I found referencing pringles association with a supercomputer was a 2007 article with this sentence:
Pringles potato chips are designed using [supercomputing] capabilities -- to assess their aerodynamic features so that on the manufacturing line they don't go flying off the line," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM.)
Pringle’s didn’t exist until 1968. Why would they waste a decade’s worth of supercomputing time (per the Reddit post that they were designed in the “‘50s using a supercomputer”) to design a potato chip?
It does not state that the chips were designed in ‘68 with a supercomputer. It directly states that “today’s supercomputers”…”are creating potato chips”, so their current design was done that way for the purposes of expedited manufacturing processes.
The Reddit posts even links to the article stating that the reference for supercomputer usage in Pringle’s design is modern.
12It's commonly cited that sci fi author Gene Wolfe is one of four people credited with development of the machine that makes Pringles. Primary source interview, via archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20060103063354/http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/wolfe.html
1I developed it. I did not invent it. That was done by a German gentlemen whose name I've forgotten for years. I developed the machine that cooks them. He had invented the basic idea, how to make the potato dough, pressing it between two forms, more or less as in a wrap-around, immersing them in hot cooking oil, and so forth and so on. And we were then called in, I was in the engineering development division, and asked to develop mass production equipment to make these chips. And we divided the task into the dough making/dough rolling portion, which was done by Len Hooper, and the cooking portion, which was done by me, and then the pickoff and salting portion, which was done by someone else, and then the can filling/can sealing portion which was done by a man who was almost driven insane by the program. Because he would develop a machine, and he would have it almost ready to go, and they would say "Oh, instead of 300 cans a minute, make it 500 cans a minute." And so he would have to throw out a bunch of stuff, and develop the new machine, and when he got that one about ready, they'd say "make it 700 cans a minute." And they almost put him in a mental hospital. He took his job very seriously and he just about flipped out.
So no mention of a supercomputer in this invention story.
4
The Supermarine Spitfire.
The London Metro map design.
The Pringles potato chip.10I had read that they create downforce so they stay put on a conveyor
7That actually makes way more sense why a supercomputer was involved. (Keeping in mind, our phones are likely more powerful than what they are talking about)
Edit: Oh, it's worse than I thought. The CRAY-1 supercomputer is 4.5x slower than a Raspberry Pi.
18
I remember reading somewhere that they also deliberately put different amounts of flavorant on each side of the chip so that you can choose to have more or less flavor intensity based on which side you place against your tongue.
7If by deliberate you mean the sprayers that spray all the artificial flavors, liquefied added nutrients, and related shit are on top of the "chip" as it moves down a conveyor, then sure I guess it's deliberate.
3lol, well it was Pringles propaganda, so I'm sure they were trying to make themselves look like they spared no expense "engineering" their snack food. 😆
1Which sucks because right way up it fits perfectly around your tongue so it's very easy to eat. But if you want the flavor, you gotta flip it over and it's harder to completely cover it with your mouth, resulting in crumbs flying everywhere.
1
They should be smaller though, so they fit in one piece into the mouth withouth hurting yourself.
6Huh? I can very easily fit an entire Pringle in my mouth. And I don't think I have that big of a mouth actually. They also don't have any sharp corners or break into sharp pieces, so I can eat it without worrying about cutting the inside of my mouth.
I don't really like what this says about me.
12They've suffered shrinkflation in my home country and they're much smaller.
3
And I still don't like the shape. I can't bite in it properly.
4It's an all-sided showel for sauce, yum.
4You're goddamn right!
2Error 429
2But they couldn't make them taste good. Just vut some potatoes you dorks.
-1self-centering [...] easy to stack up
What is this supposed to mean?
-1I can't really think of a better example, but well, if you stack half-cylinders like these:
...they can't be off-center in the direction that they're rounded, because gravity + their shape pulls them towards the center.And well, this saddle shape is rounded in two directions, so it pulls towards the center in both directions.
It's also better than a parabolic/lens shape, because while that can't either move sideways, it doesn't counteract angular movement, so the stack would still bend and fall.
6
