George J. Laurer

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George J. Laurer, 1987

George J. Laurer (born September 23, 1925 in New York City , † December 5, 2019 in Wendell, North Carolina ) was an American engineer and inventor of the bar code ( Universal Product Code ).

Life

George Laurer was born in Manhattan , New York City in 1925 . His mother, Irma Rudiger Laurer, ran a day care center. The family moved to Baltimore , where his father worked as an electrical engineer for the US Navy . As a teenager, Laurer suffered from polio for two years . While still a high school student , he was drafted into the army during World War II . After his discharge from military service, he began an apprenticeship as a radio and television mechanic. His instructor was able to convince him to get his high school diploma and go to college . In 1951 Laurer graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in engineering.

He was married to Marilyn Slocum Laurer, who died in 2013. The marriage had four children.

Career and accomplishments

The Universal Product Code was developed by Laurer at IBM.

George Laurer worked for more than three decades as an engineer at IBM from 1951 until he left in 1987 . From 1969 he worked as a senior engineer to develop barcodes for use in retail. Originally, IBM favored a round pattern ("bull's eye"), as suggested by Norman Joseph Woodland , the pioneer of the barcode idea, in the 1940s. Laurer found this pattern unsuitable because it smeared when printed. Instead, he developed a linear pattern of vertical stripes, which remained reliably legible even with normal print quality and under difficult conditions. This pattern became the basis for the Universal Product Code and was adopted by a consortium of food companies in the United States in 1973.

It was not until the early 1970s that laser and computer technology had advanced to such an extent that Laurer was able to develop a scanner that could digitally read the code composed of bars and numbers of different thicknesses. The first transaction via UPC was a scanned 10-pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum, which was sold in 1974 in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio for 67 cents. The technique developed by Laurer and his team to have goods scanned quickly by a scanner register subsequently became a resounding success worldwide. It was first used in the USA in 1974, the European variant started in 1977. The UPC is ubiquitous today.

Laurer published 20 technical bulletins on innovations for IBM and was the owner of 25 patents, including 1976 for one of the first pen scanners for reading barcodes. As the inventor of the vertical barcode, he made nothing - IBM did not patent the code in order to allow it to spread quickly and to profit from the sale of the scanner systems.

With the spread of the code, Laurer also saw himself exposed to hostility from Christian fundamentalists , who interpreted the bit pattern inserted at the beginning, in the middle and at the end for technical reasons as the "devilish" number 666 . Conspiracy theorists suspected “world money” in the code.

Honors

Laurer was inducted into the University of Maryland's Engineering Innovation Hall of Fame in 1991, and was inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame in 2000 .

Web links

Interview with George J. Laurer

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Laurer, an inventor of the modern bar code, dies at 94 December 11, 2019, accessed December 16, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Strickland Funeral Home & Crematory: George Joseph Laurer. Retrieved December 19, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Who Made That Universal Product Code? January 4, 2013, accessed December 19, 2019 .
  4. ↑ The father of barcodes has died. December 13, 2019, accessed December 16, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Laurer, George J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer and inventor of the Universal Product Code
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 2019
Place of death Wendell, North Carolina