Eccentric Genius on Retainer

“this mantra time and time again whenever the question was broached. As for expertise, Harrison and Wallace once again got lucky when they learned that a pioneer in the business was living just down the road from them, working for H.C. Baxter in Houlton, Maine. Olof Pierson would earn the label “the father of the frozen French fried potato.”16 Pierson was an eccentric, MIT-trained, chain-smoking, hard- drinking, absent-minded inventor. He earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1932, and while serving in the American army during the Second World War he was given the task of working out how to dehydrate potatoes for the armed services. His success led to his joining H.C. Baxter, where he continued his work on processing potatoes, first in canned goods and later in freezing them as french fries. He invented and drove the process and indeed was dir- ectly responsible for the first package of frozen french fries sold in 1947 by the Birds Eye Company.17 He later became an independent consult- ant in the frozen food business. McCain Foods was an early client, and later he advised the United Nations Food Organization. Pierson had the run of the place on the technical side with McCain”

“Foods because no one else knew how to build and operate a frozen food processing plant. He went to work improvising, sketching plans on the back of cigarette packages, thinking how the production process would work, and designing new machinery. Wallace explained that Pierson “had it all in his head,” never one to outline elaborate plans, preferring to solve problems on the spot.18 Harrison and Wallace were dependent on Pierson’s work. Once Pierson had put together plans for the plant, Wallace took his”