BEg2 ch21 Pringle chip equation

[Paul Cray]

Gene Wolfe developed the Pringle:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090916170648/http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html

LP: Along those lines, is it true you invented the machine that makes Pringles�
potato chips
<https://web.archive.org/web/20090916170648/http://www.pringles.com/>?

GW: 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.

***

There are doubtless various Pynchon resonances to be found if one looks
hard enough in this/Wolfe in general.

Paul

On Fri, 25 Feb 2022 at 08:50, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was a young bartender at a Holiday Inn, wanting experience
> away from a bookstore, lol,---THIS was my meaning of "experience"---when a
> group of P & G employees,
> from marketing and sales and 'brand management" I guess, came in, nursed
> drinks and coffee and spent
> all one afternoon talking about this new chip...I think I remember seeing
> that famous can but that may be
> a created memory....I did hear the word Pringle.....and that it was not yet
> on the market but soon enough.
>
> *Pringles* is an American brand of stackable potato-based crisps.
> Originally sold by Procter & Gamble
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procter_%26_Gamble> (P&G) in 1968 and
> marketed as "Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips", the brand was sold in 2012
> to the current owner, Kellogg's <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%27s
> >.
>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 3:41 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I’ll get to the chapter summary -
> >
> > (Is there an Irish word similar to mañana?
> > Ah, there are several, but none with the same degree of terrible
> urgency!)
> >
> >
> > nobody signed up afaik, so I just now notice. So maybe I can take this
> and
> > 22.
> >
> >
> > The nerds are listening to a band called Pringle Chip Equation.
> >
> > The Pringle Chip is a hyperbolic paraboloid, or so this fellow says:
> >
> > https://youtu.be/kCgsjvY5iJE
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>