Norman Joseph Woodland

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Norman Joseph Woodland (born September 6, 1921) is best known as one of the inventors of the barcode, for which he received US Patent 2,612,994 in October of 1952.^[1] He is also known as N. Joseph Woodland or NJ Woodland.

1 Personal life
2 Bar code
3 Awards
4 References

[edit] Personal life

Woodland was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey the eldest of two boys. After graduating from Atlantic City High School, Woodland went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from Drexel University in 1947.^[2] During his military service in WWII, Woodland worked as a technical assistant with the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. From 1948-1949, Woodland worked as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Drexel.

[edit] Bar code

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Sometime in 1948 his colleague Bernard Silver overheard a supermarket executive asking the dean of students to figure out how to capture product information automatically at checkout. The dean turned down the request, but Silver mentioned the problem to his friend Woodland. The two worked on some preliminary ideas, which convinced Woodland that they could create a viable product. Woodland took some stock market earnings, quit his teaching job and moved to his grandfather's Florida apartment. While at the beach one day, Woodland again thought about the problem; what came to his mind was Morse code. If dots and dashes could be used to send information electronically, there certainly should be a way to capture data about grocery products that could be communicated electronically. Another source of inspiration was the technology used for converting wave forms to sound in the movie industry. Woodland started to draw dots and dashes in the sand similar to the shapes used in Morse code, and then pulled them downward with his fingers. What appeared were thin lines resulting from the dots and thick lines from the dashes: a two-dimensional Morse code. Silver and Woodland applied for a patent in October 1949. Woodland got a job at IBM in 1951, and although he wanted IBM to develop the technology, it wasn't feasible until the 1970s. Variations on the bar code technology were developed commercially through the 1960s. IBM became involved in 1971 when they transferred Woodland to their North Carolina facilities, where he played a key role in developing the most important version of the technology, the Universal Product Code (UPC).

[edit] Awards

In 1973 IBM presented Woodland with their Outstanding Contribution Award.^[2]
In 1992 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology from President George H. W. Bush for his contribution to bar code technology.^[3]
In 1998 Woodland received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Drexel University.^[2]