Gene Wolfe and Pringles

Gene Wolfe and Pringles

Gene Wolfe is well-known as a science fiction writer, but also he was responsible for developing the process for cooking 'Pringles' brand potato crisps, as he details in this excerpt from an interview, conducted by Lawrence Person, and published in the Fall / Winter, 1988 issue of the sci-fi zine Nova Express:

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 gentleman 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 the 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.

Something to think about, the next time you pop open a can of Pringles !