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
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.
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:
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
So no mention of a supercomputer in this invention story.