Video: Secrets From The Potato Chip Factory

By Lam Thuy Vo,

Jess Jiang

Published April 4, 2013 at 11:20 AM CDT

For more on potato chip innovation, look at these five animated GIFs.

We took a tour of Herr's potato chip factory in Pennsylvania to find out how making chips has changed (and gotten more efficient) since 1946.

A note: Ed Herr says workers whose jobs were replaced by machines (e.g., getting rid of green chips, hauling sacks of potatoes) were reassigned to other jobs, like driving trucks full of chips to stores.

Lam Thuy Vo

Jess Jiang

Jess Jiang is the producer for NPR's international podcast, Rough Translation. Previously, Jess was a producer for Planet Money. In 2014, she won an Emmy for the team's T-shirt project. She followed the start of the t-shirt's journey, from cotton farms in Mississippi to factories in Indonesia. But her biggest prize has been getting to drive a forklift, back hoe, and a 35-ton digger for a story. Jess got her start in public radio at Studio 360—though, if you search hard enough, you can uncover a podcast she made back in college.

See stories by Jess Jiang

Video: Secrets From The Potato Chip Factory

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