16. Fred Baur requested his ashes be placed in a Pringles can
Anyone purchasing a bag of potato chips or other similar snack food has experienced the annoyance of opening the package to discover its contents smashed into crumbs. Beginning in 1956 marketing giant Proctor and Gamble decided to do something about it. Fredric Baur developed the fried dough chip and can to contain them over the next two years, though dissatisfied with the taste he eventually dropped the project. Others took up the cause. In the mid-1960s the product was marketed under the name Pringles, with each chip the same size and shape (a hyperbolic paraboloid for those who care about such matters) packaged in a stack in a tubular can. Although originally called potato chips they were eventually referred to as crisps.
Fred Baur was not credited with the invention of the crisps themselves, though he was awarded a patent for the method of packaging and the package itself, the famous Pringles can. His pride in the invention was evident when he requested that his ashes be placed in one of the cans for interment. His family complied to some extent, a portion of his ashes were interred in a Pringles can, alongside a more conventional funerary urn containing another portion, and the rest in yet another urn given to relatives. Baur died in 2008 and his ashes within the can of his invention were interred in Springfield Township, Ohio, a suburban area near Cincinnati, home of Proctor and Gamble, which no longer makes Pringles.
