Bernard Silver

Bernard Silver (* 21st September 1924 ; † 28. August 1963 ) was American electrical engineer and Norman Joseph Woodland inventor of bar codes .

Silver earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Drexel Institute of Technology in 1947 , where he later taught physics. In 1948 he teamed up with Woodland and invented the barcode for product identification after overhearing a conversation from a grocery chain manager who wanted an automated inventory system. In 1949 they filed a patent that was granted in 1952 (US Patent 2612994, Classifying apparatus and method ). They sold it to Philco (and RCA that same year) for $ 15,000 in 1952 (and it expired in 1969 before the invention became widely used). Silver died prematurely in a car accident and lost the widespread commercial use of barcodes in the 1970s. The first scanning systems were installed in 1967 by Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in a Kroger store in Cincinnati, with concentric circles as codes. In 1970, an industry-wide common barcode was agreed (which, however, was also addressed in the original patent alongside concentric circles).

In 2011 he became a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame with Woodland .

Web links

• History of the bar code