Despite recognizing that manual check-out is a point of inefficiency and human error in retail operations, it took until 1970 for technology and design to catch up to the need for a better system. In that year a corporation made up of the American grocery industry’s leading trade associations (called the UGPCC, for the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council) established a standard numeric system for identifying productsthe basis for the Universal Product Code, or UPC. A good first step, but hand0keying 11-number serials wouldn’t have been much of an improvement, so they reached out to every tech company they could for ideas. While many had previously developed optical and scanning equipment, IBM hadn’t made a splash in that department, despite having early pioneer Woodland on staff! With blessings from Woodland, the IBM project was spearheaded by George Laurer, whose contributions are beautifully explained in a recent 99% Invisible episode .
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Queen of Spain 