Barcode's inventor is dead
December 14, 2012  12:28
Norman Joseph Woodland, an engineer who invented the barcode technology, has died at the age of 91. 

Woodland was a graduate student when he teamed up with classmate Bernard Silver to create the thick-and-thin line system in the 1940s. 

Woodland''s family said he died on Sunday at his home in Edgewater, New Jersey, Sky News reports. 

According to the report, Woodland is said to have come up with the Morse code-inspired idea while sitting on a chair surrounded by sand. "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 told Smithsonian magazine in 1999. 

"I said: ''Golly! Now I have four lines, and they could be wide lines and narrow lines instead of dots and dashes'',' he said. 

The idea was patented in the US 60 years ago and sold to battery storage company Philco for 15,000 dollars, a figure that today would be worth 130,000 dollars, the report said.
« Back to LIVE

TOP STORIES