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S&C: G.W. and Pringles?
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Dan
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Mar 31, 2011 02:30PM
At some point after I started reading Shadow of the Torturer I guess I was asking myself "Who is this Gene Wolfe guy?", and I had to look him up on Wikipedia. Most of it I don't remember, because I saw the magical phrase "his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato chips." Wow. I've enjoyed his books AND the chips he helped make. That's a lot of talent coming from one guy,
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"LP: Along those lines, is it true you invented the machine that makes Pringles potato chips?
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."
From this interview:
Hmm, I wonder what the connection is between invention and writing. I remember hearing that Neal Stephenson spent the mornings writing and the afternoons inventing while he worked on Anathem.
