George Laurer, Co-Inventor of the Barcode, Dies At 94 (bbc.com) 21
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: George Laurer, the U.S. engineer who helped develop the barcode, has died at the age of 94. Barcodes, which are made up of black stripes of varying thickness and a 12-digit number, help identify products and transformed the world of retail. They are now found on products all over the world. The idea was pioneered by a fellow IBM employee, but it was not until Laurer developed a scanner that could read codes digitally that it took off. Laurer died last Thursday at his home in Wendell, North Carolina, and his funeral was held on Monday.
It was while working as an electrical engineer with IBM that George Laurer fully developed the Universal Product Code (UPC), or barcode. He developed a scanner that could read codes digitally. He also used stripes rather than circles that were not practical to print. The UPC went on to revolutionize "virtually every industry in the world", IBM said in a tribute on its website.
It was while working as an electrical engineer with IBM that George Laurer fully developed the Universal Product Code (UPC), or barcode. He developed a scanner that could read codes digitally. He also used stripes rather than circles that were not practical to print. The UPC went on to revolutionize "virtually every industry in the world", IBM said in a tribute on its website.
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New benchmark for optimism: sure he's dead, but he could have been dead *sooner*.
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For healthy adults living until there mid 90's is probably the best way to go.
For people who live past the mid 90's their quality of life rapidly diminishes. Extreme loss in mobility and self reliance.
For most healthy adults who reach their mid 90's they have all their affairs in order as well their friends and family are emotionally ready for their death.
Death is a natural part of our life, while their presence will be missed we shouldn't see it as a pessimistic outcome to our lives, especially if you are
Don't worry (Score:2)
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His loss from inventory is noted (Score:2)
A 1925 model, Laurer was a teenage polio survivor, and he held 25 patents.
As of 2019, UPC barcodes were being scanned more than 6 billion times each day.
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Maybe but a quick check of the Wikipedia page on barcodes reveals that describing Laurer as a co-inventor of the barcode is a huge stretch of the imagination. He participated in the design of the UPC barcode but that is it. the actual barcode was invented long before Laurer go involved.
Not a bad legacy (Score:1)
All the cumulative tiny savings in stocktaking and product sales must have saved billions over the years.
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Just all the time saved with cashiers being able to scan items as opposed to using ten key on a keypad has saved perhaps trillions of dollars. Overall, barcodes and automation have saved a ton of time and effort on everyone's behalf.
Barcodes are one of those inventions that I wonder how we did without, because it is so fundamental to shipping and distribution.
Did not invent the barcode. (Score:3, Informative)
Not to take anything from Laurer's accomplishments, but the UPC is one specific type of barcode and not even the first one. The barcode was invented by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver and patented in 1951 [espacenet.com].
Re:Did not invent the barcode. (Score:4, Interesting)
As is often the case, a chain of contributions was necessary.
He developed the technology from Woodland et al's great idea to practical implementation... think Fleming's "mold juice" to useful antibiotic penicillin by Florey, Chain, and colleagues.
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UPC was only the start... (Score:2)
It has the lowest information density, but awesome tolerance for printing with crappy technology (read: flexo).
That concept spawned dozens of different 1d symbologies (Code 39, Code 128, PostNet, etc.).
The trifecta - Samuel Morse --> Norman Woodland --> George Laurer should be enshrined in the "Hall of people that came up with really cool shit that became so ubiquitous that no one notices it anymore."
Beanies off, hand over pocket protectors, and slide rules set to ln (natural log) in honor of Mr. Laur
Showing Respect (Score:5, Funny)
And as the box containing George's mortal remains was carefully lowered into his final resting place, the assembled mourners put their hands over their hearts and uttered a loud "BEEP!"
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And as the box containing George's mortal remains was carefully lowered into his final resting place, the assembled mourners put their hands over their hearts and uttered a loud "BEEP!"
I was thinking about commenting with something beep related; yours was better.
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The coffin had to be lowered multiple times before the scanner could find it, and a warning to place ALL items in the bagging area appeared on George's digital tombstone, requiring a customer-service representative from the funeral home to enter an override code. George's widow further complicated things by leaving the cemetery without taking her receipt.
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Beeping is one of those things that's ubiquitous but very necessary for high speed barcode scanning. It provides the necessary feedback that the scanner read the code successfully so the cashier can just literally do a two handed pass - one hand grabs the item from the conveyor, it gets slid across the scanner and caught by the other hand which then directs it down the counter for the bagger (or holding area for the customer to self-bag).
All this can result in many items being scanned per second - as long a
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