Latest Norman Joseph Woodland Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Barcodes have been the mainstay of the consumer world for close to 40 years, first used on a food product in 1974 when Wrigley’s chewing gum received the first barcode (the predecessor to the Universal Product Code, or UPC). But the linear displays of bars and lines have been in use elsewhere since the early 1950s, initially as a code to label railroad cars. The idea for a barcode was first conceived in 1948 by Bernard Silver, a...

ARMONK, N.Y., March 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Inventors Hall of Fame today announced it will induct retired IBMer (NYSE: IBM) Norman Joseph Woodland for his contribution to the invention of the Universal Product Code (UPC). The UPC has become the world's most pervasive inventory tracking tool and has transformed the way consumers shop, how businesses and retailers manage inventory -- from large industrial equipment to canned goods sold in grocery stores. To view the multimedia...