There is no way the design took two years and required supercomputers
But they had to crunch the numbers
Oh shit I take it back
The 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.
Like 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.
It took 3 seconds, and it was AI what figured it all out.
AI doesn’t figure out shit.
Its design took 2 years and required the use of supercomputers
[citation needed]
It 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/
[Sincere] Thanks a lot!
[Condescending answer]: I am programmed to burn holes in meatbags, master.
Nice reference.
Though worth saying that the link suggests the computing was used for aerodynamics for ensuring production wouldn’t destroy them not. For the shape as such. I’ve also seem it said that the can is part of that too.
Is this real or am I being trolled
I’m pretty sure it’s real. I met someone once who worked in materials research for food and they said that modelling was big there because the scope for experimentation is more limited. In materials for construction where they wanted to change a property they could play around with adding new additives and seeing what happens. For food though you can’t add anything beyond a limited set of chemicals that already have approval from the various agencies* and therefore they look at trying to fine tune in other ways.
So for chocolate, for example, they control lots of material properties by very careful control of temperature and pressure as it solidifies. This is why if chocolate melts and resolidifies you see the white bits of milk that don’t remain within the materia.
*Okay you can add a new chemical but that means a time frame of over a decade to then get approval. I think the number of chemicals that’s happened to is very very small and that’s partly because the innovation framework of capitalism is very short term.
wonder what kinda of supercomputer they used in 1968
- Bender
Challenge accepted *unzips
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).
“That looks about right.”
With the stuff about ‘super computers’, this seems more like a shitpost than a science meme.
That article is useless. Any other reference?
I mean, you can just google “pringles super computers” They did use a supercomputer in modeling the thing, most articles are useless cuz they’re not going to go into details about how or why.
or here’s a CNN article about it. the blurb is just
“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. Personally, though, you’re missing out on this gem
Keep in mind, pringles were around since 1968, apparently. modeling and simulating dynamic airflow was probably barely in it’s infancy. (and even to day, computational fluid dynamics is some exceedingly hard math to rock)
Thanks for the reply! Yes sure and I did that but was a bit irked that the link you posted as a source for information regarding the supercomputing was (sorry) useless.
Anyways thanks for caring :)
Cheers
Completely leaves out that you can use two of them to make yourself look like a duck
And it’s cheaper than lip fillers.
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:
A real human bean
10 vacuum tubes
I guess they needed it to mathematically design and calculate with it but idk
My digging around has resulted in this find:
ENIAC was built in 1945. And Cray was building supercomputers in the 60s
I 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.
My digging around has resulted in this find:
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.
“Once you pop you can’t stop” is actually a warning about this
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.I really thought everyone was eating them entirely and in stacks of 5 …
No, the shape hinders putting the far enough into your mouth. Luckily, I’ve got a big one.
Wait…
I was fitting a whole upside down Pringle along my tongue when I was a kid.
This 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.
It’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
I 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.
The Supermarine Spitfire.
The London Metro map design.
The Pringles potato chip.I had read that they create downforce so they stay put on a conveyor
That 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.
They should be smaller though, so they fit in one piece into the mouth withouth hurting yourself.
Huh? 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.
> They also don’t have any sharp corners or break into sharp pieces,
This man has never been within 10 meters of a IRL pringle.
I ate an entire can just today
you’re not supposed to eat the can
You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not even my real dad! Nom nom nom
Bro. You’re supposed to use the can and a pencils to make a directional antenna to borrow your neighbors WiFi.
Bro I can fit a stack of Pringles in my mouth.
Gif or it didn’t happen
I still have a 200g original tube, they’re almost 100g now, I would easily believe someone could fit the whole damn tube in their mouth now
I meant like a few at once. A whole tube would indeed be impressive.
They’ve suffered shrinkflation in my home country and they’re much smaller.
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.
If 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.
Which 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.
lol, 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. 😆
And I still don’t like the shape. I can’t bite in it properly.
It’s an all-sided showel for sauce, yum.
