Baking cakes and making modeling software While listening to the radio show "All Things Considered" in traffic recently, I was becharmed by, of all things, a story about 1950's-era U.S. homemakers. More specifically, about the processed food industry's attempts to displace homemade dinners and desserts.
While the easy-bake cake mixes were one of the many industrial advances enabled by World War II, the cake mixes were slow to be accepted by women consumers of that day. General Mills (not a real general) hired Austrian psychologist Ernest Dichter to study consumer sentiment; Dichter concluded that a cake mix with dried eggs did not leave the home baker with enough to do. The solution was to call for fresh eggs in the recipe.
I knew this story well, but not its ultimate source. It was a very favorite story of Ray Weiss, a longtime reporter and editor on ICs and embedded systems. -on adtmag, Apr 21, 2004
RELATED Ray Weiss: In Memoriam - ED Online, Feb 4, 2002 Something from the Oven - NPR, April 19, 2004 When flower invaded the Kitchen - NYT, April 14, 2004
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YOU GOT TO BREAK SOME EGGS
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