George Laurer had no idea his design would reach well beyond retail outlets when he created the black line and number sets known as the modern bar code while working for IBM as an engineer. Forty ...

An employee at Marsh supermarket in Troy scanned groceries using a UPC (Universal Product Code) and scanner for the first time on June 26, 1974. It started with a pack of gum that was scanned using an ...

If he had followed instructions from his boss, George Laurer might never have succeeded in designing the Universal Product Code. In 1971, a supervisor at International Business Machines Corp. told the ...

Every purchase evokes his design of the rectangular Universal Product Code. But although it became ubiquitous, he received no royalties. By Sam Roberts George J. Laurer, whose design of the vertically ...

Some technologies you use every day, but without thinking about them. The bar code is one of these: everything you buy has one of these black and white striped codes on it. We've all seen how they are ...

Product bar codes were originally developed to help with inventory tracking and speed up checkout at grocery stores. The relative speed and ease of use of the bar code system, or Universal Product ...