• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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.