About Norman Joseph Woodland
Norman Joseph Woodland (September 6, 1921 – December 9, 2012) was an American inventor and engineer, best known as one of the inventors of the barcode, for which he received a patent in October 1952. Later, employed by IBM, he developed the format which became the ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) of product labeling and check-out stands. == Early life and career == Woodland was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 6, 1921, the elder of two boys in his family. He was of Jewish descent. After graduating from Atlantic City High School, Woodland did military service in World War II as a technical assistant with the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Woodland went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from Drexel University (then called Drexel Institute of Technology) in 1947. From 1948 to 1949, he worked as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Drexel. == Developing the bar code == In 1948, Bernard Silver, a fellow Drexel Institute graduate student with Woodland, overheard a supermarket executive asking the dean of engineering if the Institute could determine how to capture product information automatically at checkout. The dean turned down the request, but Silver was interested enough to mention the problem to Woodland. After working on some preliminary ideas, Woodland was persuaded that they could create a viable product.
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