Instant Pot

choi

I completed the annotations yesterday, but decided to wait for translation. It does appear today, though without the Chinese name of Mr Robert Wang. I guess he does not want to be known. For a good reason I guess, such as old acquaintances wishing to "borrow" money.


Kevin Roose, 快煲电压力锅为何风靡美国？ 纽约时报, Dec 19, 2017
https://cn.nytimes.com/business/20171219/instant-pot/

, which is translated from

Kevin Roose, Instant Pot's Inner Sanctum; New York Times, Dec 18, 2017, at page B1 (top report in Business section)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/business/instant-pot.html

Note:
(a) At the bottom of the online version is that this report "appears in print on December 18, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition." Section B is Business.
(i) According to the company's website. Instant Pot is a brand of several models of "programmable Pressure Cooker," commercially available from 2010 to 2014 with increasing sophistication in each introduction. The latest, that of 2014 features
(A) 10-in-1 in the previous model: pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice/porridge cooker, cake maker, yogurt maker, sauté/searing, steamer, warmer, sterilizer, and non-pressure cooker
(B) new: "Bluetooth® technology that wirelessly connects, allowing users to program and monitor their cooking from mobile devices via an iOS or Android app."
(ii) It seems to me, who knows nothing about electronics or cooking, is the company turned the pressure cooker electronic / digitalized.

(c) "KANATA, Ontario —  Truth be told, the headquarters of Instant Pot don't look much like a church. * * * on the outskirts of Ottawa * * * Its [company's] deity is the Instant Pot, Instant Pot, a line of electric multicookers 多功能电锅 * * * The company, which is privately held, doesn't release sales data * * * I went to Kanata to get a peek behind the scenes of the Instant Pot phenomenon and meet its creator: Robert Wang, who invented the device and serves as chief executive of Double Insight, its parent company.
(i)
(A) Kanata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanata,_Ontario
(view map; Located about 22 km (14 mi) west-southwest of the city's downtown, Kanata had a population of 80,781; WAS a suburb of Ottawa [a city with its own mayor] "efore it was amalgamated into [annexed by] Ottawa in 2001"

section 1 History: It [the place] remained mainly agricultural until the 1960s when it became the site of heavy development. Modern Kanata is largely the creation of Bill Teron, a developer and urban planner who purchased over 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of rural land and set about building a model community."

This is how the place hot its name.
(B) To the north of Kanata is Ottawa River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_River
(1,271 km (790 mi); "For most of its length, it defines the border between these two provinces [Ontario and Quebec]. It is a major tributary [mouth at Montreal] of the St Lawrence River)
(C) Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada
(section 1 Etymology: the name is now accepted as coming from the St Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement")
(ii) headquarters (n; plural in form but singular or plural in construction)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/headquarters
(iii) public company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_company
(Usually, the securities of a publicly traded company are owned by many investors while the shares of a privately held company are owned by relatively few shareholders)

The "singular or plural in construction" means:
(A) As the subject that may be followed by a verb in singular or plural form;
(B) As a noun can be preceded by a or two -- without changing the noun headquarters.

(c) "Mr Wang, 53 * * * grew up in Harbin, China, as the son of two professors, he earned a PhD in computer science * * * he was laid off from his dot-com position in 2008, just as the global financial crisis hit.  After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to start his own tech company, Mr Wang turned his attention to kitchen appliances, a market that hadn't yet been visited by the tech industry's disruption fairies. A lapsed home cook whose busy schedule rarely allowed him to make healthy meals for his wife and two children, Mr Wang recruited two other engineers and spent 18 months and $350,000 of his savings developing a high-tech device"
(i) I fail to find his Chinese name or resume. So I do not know where he graduated from.
(ii) lapsed (adj): "having ceased to be active in practice, membership, or belief  <a lapsed Catholic>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lapsed