Big green hat-tip to BookReader, who reminded me of Frispo-matic fries in a catbox conversation.
Way back on Monday, April 19, 1971, the American Potato Company filed a United States federal trademark for a device that produces french fries from dehydrated potatoes or concentrates. The United States Patent and Trademark Office granted this petition with a trademark serial number of 72389512.
So, what exactly is this magical device? The best way to describe it is to compare it to a Play-Doh factory. You plop some Play-Doh into a small chute, apply some pressure on a lever, and a long tube/star-shaped tube of stuff comes out the other end. Also comparable to a pasta machine.
The Frispo-matic machine is a large metal device where you dump in the pre-mixed potato concentrate (or, if you're using the dry bags of potato flakes, you mix it with water) through one end of the contraption. The hopper is then closed and the machine begins to apply pressure (I believe through a screw-like impeller) that forces the potato slurry to compress and get pushed out through a small opening that is shaped a bit like a tube with six ridges. You then move a bowl of these small tubes (they usually break apart around two to four inches long) and you pop them into a deep fryer.
The United States Navy had these on some of the boats I was stationed on because the concentrated dry mix would last through the next ice age and were easy to store. In reality, this is instant mashed potatoes shoved through a small hole and fried, but for some reason they tasted better than even old-school McDonald's fries. If you've ever had weirdly-shaped french fries that looked uniform and had a bunch of ridges along them, perhaps at a state fair, you've enjoyed Frispo-matic fries.