page_title: George Laurer
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: George Laurer / Career
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Code UPC
context_page_description: George Joseph Laurer III was an American engineer for IBM at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. He published 20 bulletins, held 25 patents and developed the Universal Product Code in the early 1970s. He devised the coding and pattern used for the UPC, based on Joe Woodland's more general idea for barcodes.
context_section_description: Laurer was a 36-year employee of IBM until his retirement in June 1987. He joined IBM in 1951 as a junior engineer. By 1969, he had been promoted to senior engineer / scientist and moved to the company's offices in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. 
  At IBM, Laurer was assigned the task of developing barcodes for use in grocery stores. Initially, IBM envisioned a circular bullseye pattern as proposed by Joe Woodland in 1940s. Laurer realized that the pattern was ineffective because of smearing during printing. Instead, he designed a vertical pattern of stripes which he proposed to his superior in 1971 or 1972. This change was accepted by IBM management and Laurer then worked with Woodland and mathematician David Savir to develop and refine the details. These included the addition of a check digit to provide error correction. In 1973, the IBM proposal was accepted by the Symbol Selection committee of the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council, a consortium of grocery store companies.
  The Universal Product Code has bit patterns at the beginning, middle and end of the barcode called "guard bars" and these have been interpreted as the digits 666.  When he first developed the code, Laurer noticed that the digit 6 appeared several times and that this might be interpreted as the number of the Beast, as his daughter was studying the Book of Revelation. When the codes started to appear in stores, there were protests and an urban legend developed. Laurer addressed this on his website:
  Answer – Yes, they do RESEMBLE the code for a six. An even parity 6 is:
  1 module wide black bar 1 module wide white space 1 module/ wide black bar 4 module wide white space.
  There is nothing sinister about this nor does it have anything to do with the Bible's "mark of the beast" (The New Testament, The Revelation, Chapter 13, paragraph 18). It is simply a coincidence like the fact that my first, middle, and last name all have 6 letters. There is no connection with an international money code either.
caption: Universal Product Code was developed by Laurer while at IBM
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