Who Is the Pringles Man?

In 1956, Procter & Gamble assigned a task to chemist Fredric J. Baur (1918-2008): to develop a new kind of potato chips to address consumer complaints about broken, greasy, and stale chips, as well as air in the bags. Baur spent 2 years developing saddle-shaped chips from fried dough, and selected a tubular can as the chips' container. The saddle-shape of Pringles chips is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. However, Baur could not figure out how to make the chips palatable, and was pulled off the task to work on another brand.