The first patent for bar code (US Patent #2,612,994) was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952. In 1948, Bernard Silver was a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia. A local food chain store owner had made an inquiry to the Drexel Institute asking about research into a method of automatically reading product information during checkout. Bernard Silver joined together with fellow graduate student Norman Joseph Woodland to work on a solution. Woodland's first idea was to use ultraviolet light sensitive ink. The team built a working prototype but decided that the system was too unstable and expensive. They went back to the drawing board. On October 20, 1949, Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for the "Classifying Apparatus and Method", describing their invention as "article classification...through the medium of identifying patterns". Bar code was first used commercially in 1966, but it was soon realized that there would have to be some sort of industry standard set. By 1970, the Universal Grocery Products Identification Code (UGPIC) was written by a company called Logicon Inc. The first company to produce bar code equipement for retail trade use (using UGPIC) was the American company Monarch Marking (1970), and for industrial use, the British company Plessey Telecommunications (1970). UGPIC lead to the U.P.C. symbol set (Universal Product Code), which is still used in the USA. George J. Laurer is considered the inventor of U.P.C. or Uniform Product Code, invented in 1973. In June of 1974, the first U.P.C. scanner was installed at a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's Gum. Also see http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbar_code.htm

An important inventor in this area is Jerome Lemelson, who used bar code reader patents to ransom many large corporations. Biography is provided below. Jerome H. Lemelson Jerome Lemelson, known to his friends and family as "Jerry," lived the quintessential American dream. The holder of more than 550 patents, Lemelson and his remarkably creative intellect touched almost ever facet of our every day lives. One of the century's five most prolific inventors, Lemelson received an average of one patent a month for more than 40 years—all on his own, without support from established research institutions or corporate research and development departments. Automated manufacturing systems and bar code readers, automatic teller machines and cordless phones, cassette players and camcorders, fax machines and personal computers—even crying baby dolls derived from Lemelson's innovations. A universal robot that could measure, weld, rivet, transport and even inspect for quality control utilized a new technology: machine vision. This was his breakthrough invention and the one of which he was most proud, despite the hundreds of others he produced during his 45-year career. Read the Design News profile of Jerry Lemelson - the "Lone Wolf of the Sierras" (Adobe Acrobat format).Born July 18, 1923 on Staten Island in New York City, Lemelson was the oldest of three brothers. He showed talent for inventing at a young age and first invented a lighted tongue depressor that he made for his father, a physician. After high school he attended New York University (NYU), but his education was interrupted by World War II. He left school to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a designer of weapons and other systems. After the war ended he returned to NYU and graduated in 1951 with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering and two master's degrees, one in aeronautical and one in industrial engineering. About 20 years after a first meeting as children, Lemelson married Dorothy Ginsberg in 1954. They had two sons: Eric, born in 1959, and Robert, born in 1961. After graduation, Lemelson worked as an engineer for several companies, including an aircraft manufacturer, a metal refiner, and a weather balloon company. In his spare time, he continued inventing things and applying for patents. He was awarded his first patent in 1953 for a toy cap, a variation of the propeller beanie. The couple lived in several different places over the years before calling Incline Village, Nevada, home. They started out in Metuchen, New Jersey, where Jerry worked out of a workshop in the attic. Dorothy, an interior designer who studied at the Parsons School of Design, ran her interior design business from a first-floor studio. By 1958 Lemelson quit his job and became a full-time inventor and Dorothy supported the family with her salary well into the mid-1960s. Lemelson became one of the few people able to make a living as an independent inventor. He never specialized in a single field, but constantly looked for innovative ways to solve problems in many different areas. He was known for waking up in the middle of the night with a solution to a problem that had been on his mind, but he would also come up with ideas unrelated to anything he had ever done before. His first experience with patent infringement left him stunned, and ultimately led to his crusade to defend the rights of independent inventors against corporate giants. After conceiving an idea for a cut-out face mask that could be printed on the back of a cereal box, he filed for a patent and then took the concept to a major cereal manufacturer. The company rejected his idea, but about three years later began packaging its cereal boxes with a mask on the back. Lemelson filed suit but the case was dismissed from court and dismissed again on an appeal. It was to be the first of many courtroom battles. As his list of inventions grew, Lemelson found himself spending more and more time defending patents in courts. He was involved in more than 20 cases, and he lost more times than he won. Read the U.S. News and World Report article: Powers of InventionIn his philanthropy, as in his professional work, Lemelson was devoted to invention. In the 1990s he and Dorothy established the Lemelson Foundation which began funding new programs that promote invention and entrepreneurship. The Lemelson-MIT Prize Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was established. Each year the program gives out several awards, including the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, presented to an outstanding American inventor-innovator. Lemelson also donated money to create the Lemelson National Program in Invention at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and at the University of Nevada, Reno. Another important legacy is the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, which was created through a $10 million gift to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. In 1996, Lemelson was diagnosed with liver cancer, and not surprisingly he fought it the best way he knew how, by inventing improvements to medical devices and cancer treatment methodologies. He submitted nearly 40 patent applications during the last year of his life. Lemelson died on October 1, 1997, at the age of 74. A gifted and versatile inventor, Jerome Lemelson always stood by his belief that people who worked hard and believed in themselves would triumph. He devoted much of his life to championing the rights of the independent inventor, because above all he wanted to ensure that the United States thrived in a high-tech, global marketplace.

Wallace Flint was the first person to suggest an automated checkout system in 1932. Flint's system was economically unfeasible, however, 40 years later, Flint, as vice-president of the National Association of Food Chains, supported the efforts which led to the Uniform Product Code (UPC). Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver are most often credited as having originally invented the barcode on October 20, 1949 by filing patent application serial number 122,416 (which became Patent Number 2,612,994). Though Woodland and Silver pioneered the concept of a symbol and a reader, it was not until 1974 that the first UPC bar code was actually used in a supermarket. George Laurer is credited as being the inventor of the modern UPC bar code system. It was 1970 when McKinsey & Co. (a consulting firm) in conjunction with UGPCC (which stood for the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council, a corporation formed by the grocery industries' leading trade associations* ) defined a numeric format for product identification. A request was made to many companies to make a proposal of a code, a symbol incorporating the code, and specifications for both. The request went to Singer, National Cash Register, Litton Industries, RCA, Pitney-Bowes, IBM and many others large and small. Most of the other companies had optical codes and scanning equipment in the market place already. IBM did not. Therefore, in 1971 George Laurer was given the task by IBM management to design the best code and symbol suitable for the grocery industry. In May of 1973, IBM's proposal was accepted. The only changes made by UGPCC was the type font used for the human readable and the ink contrast specification. Following the acceptance of the original UPC specification, George Laurer was asked to find a way to add another digit. The symbol already held twelve, the eleven required by UGPCC and a check digit George Laurer added to achieve the required reliability. The addition of the thirteenth digit could not cause the equipment to require extensive modification. Further, the original domestic version could not be modified. The extra digit would allow for "country identification" and make the UPC worldwide. Again George Laurer found a way to accommodate the requirement and the EAN (European Article Numbering system) symbol was born. Many countries are using the same symbol with their identifying country "flag" (the 13th digit), but chose to call the symbol by other names. An example is JAN (Japanese Article Numbering system), the Japanese version. The symbol has truly become worldwide. In the years since 1973, George Laurer has proposed, and the Uniform Product Code Council, Inc. (formerly UGPCC) has accepted, several other enhancements. Among these enhancements is a price check digit for domestic and another for European markets. There is also an expanded symbol, Version D, which has not yet seen wide use. http://www.keyword.com/barcode_upc.htm

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