Norman Woodland, co-inventor of Bar Code, is Dead

Norman Joseph Woodland,  co-inventor of Bar Code, died on 9th December 2012 in Edgewater, New Jersey.

Norman Joseph Woodland

Woodland was born on 6th September, 1921, in Atlantic City, NJ.

Woodland obtained his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia, in 1947. In 1948, an executive from a local supermarket visiting the campus requested the dean of Drexel to find an efficient mechanism for encoding product information but did not receive any encouraging response.

But Bernard Silver, another student of Drexel, heard the conversation, approached Woodland, and started working on the problem. An initial attempt to print product information in fluorescent ink and read it using UV light proved impractical.

But Woodland kept working on the problem and actually left graduate school to continue working on it. During his quest for a solution to the problem, he toyed with the idea of using a graphic version of Morse Code which he had learnt as a Boy Scout.

Woodland told the Smithsonian Magazine in 1999: “I poked my four fingers into the sand and for whatever reason I didn’t know I pulled my hand toward me and drew four lines. He added: “Only seconds later I took my four fingers. They were still in the sand and I swept them around into a full circle.”

Woodland preferred the circular pattern on further examination of the solution since it would enable the code to be scanned without bothering about its orientation with reference to the scanner.

He shared the idea with Silver and they patented the solution. They named it “Classifying Apparatus and Method”.

The solution was expensive and difficult to implement method was expensive and unwieldy and they sold it later to Philco for $15,000.

The present day Bar Code, based on Woodland’s work, was developed by George J.Lauer from IBM in the early 70’s. Bar Codes today are ubiquitous.

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