UPC

“A number of factors provided the impetus for organizations involved in the food industry to form an 'Ad Hoc' committee to investigate a solution to the problem of rising sales costs. In 1970, they decided to establish a committee that would be made up of only 10 members and each would be a CEO, President, or Chairman of the Board of their respective companies. Also each member would be allowed to bring only one technical advisor. Executives on this level would have the authority to commit their company without delays required for approvals. The companies represented had to include all facets of the industry, large and small. This committee was so key to the [UPC's] development.”

“The main challenge was that the symbol had to be printable on all types of printing presses that were in use at that time. And at that time—1973—some companies were using printing presses that were built actually before World War I. The quality was poor—if you recall, yoghurt came in wax containers, some were printed with rubber stamps. The circular code presented a major problem in two respects. The minimum bar width was too small, and the circular bars would smear in the direction of the press. So we came up with a linear bar code, and a way to scan that code in an omnidirectional fashion.”

“My idea originally came from seeing the black-and-white patterns of motion picture optical sound tracks, and then the 'dash-dot-dash' pattern of Morse code. In both of these, a rapidly changing series of signals conveys information. That's essentially what bar coding is ... a non-verbal symbol ... a Morse code for reading a label.”

“The headquarters were at IBM Research Triangle Park, but we were working mostly out of a rented building in Raleigh proper. We didn't have the scanner or the presses to test our theories on, so we had to test it using pure math. Our proposal was based 100% on mathematics.”

“Well the only real glitch we really had became a joke among the team: the ‘golden chicken’ and the ‘platinum pork.’ It hit us off guard—our test and our arithmetic showed us that we shouldn’t have run into this. What happened was the mark symbol that was printed in-store was different than the ones made at the manufacturer in that the price itself isn’t embedded into the code … What happened was that there was a misread that read that price wrong, and it charged $99.99/lb for chicken.”

“We learned something very important about people. We learned that people will forgive the cute little grocery store clerk if she mischarges by a few cents. If the clerk charges you 97 cents instead of 79 cents, no big deal—that’s okay, it’s no real problem. But we don’t forgive computers, no matter how bad they are. If a computer charges you too much, all heck breaks loose!”

“It was slow to be accepted. It makes sense why it was slow—it’s the chicken and the egg. The grocery manufacturers didn’t want to put symbols on their packages unless there was something in the store to read them. And of course the stores didn’t want to invest in the equipment unless there was something to read. It was slow coming about and at one point the Wall Street Journal said it was a complete flop. It took until about 1977 for the UPC to really take off.”

“[My boss] wanted me to write something up that said the RCA [bull’s-eye] proposal was the greatest thing since sex, but my nature and my training would not allow me to support something I didn’t believe in. ... I simply went against my manager’s instruction and set out to design a better system.”

“My manager lived across the street from me so when I saw him arrive home from his vacation, I went over to his place with the charts and explained what I had done. He had no choice but to agree, but he also made it clear that if I was wrong or if I could not sell the idea to the brass it would end my career, not his. I was truly playing 'bet your job' by designing a new code and symbol rather than supporting what the brass wanted. My arguments must have been persuasive since I was allowed to continue with my approach in lieu of supporting the bull's eye.”

“At the end of a flawless demonstration for Mr. Evans, we had our ace softball pitcher pitch bean bag ash trays, with symbols on the bottom, as fast as he could over the scanner. When each one read correctly, Mr. Evans was convinced.”

“I didn't really know what the magnitude of the impact would be. We were looking for an easy way to use some of this new technology to encode data in machine-readable form. [Laurer’s innovation of the scanner provided] an easy and reliable way to encode and decode UPC data.”

The result of decades of work, investment, and unprecedented cooperation in the grocery industry, the UPC symbol today is generating $17 Billion through the grocery channel alone in annual savings for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.

“I guess we didn't know what we started. I always liked to take complex things and make them simple. I'm glad that this one worked so well.”

“There are over 400 codes available today. The UPC is very unique. It's the one that proved to the world that barcodes were a truly viable way to mark things. It changed the game.”