1. George Joseph Laurer III was an American engineer for IBM at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
13 Facts About George Laurer
1. 2.
George Laurer published 20 bulletins, held 28 patents and developed the Universal Product Code in the early 1970s.
3.
George Laurer devised the coding and pattern used for the UPC, based on Joe Woodland's more general idea for barcodes.
4.
George Laurer was born on September 23,1925, in New York City.
5.
George Laurer's family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, so his father, an electrical engineer, could work for the United States Navy.
6.
George Laurer was still interested in radio and kept up his amateur radio licence.
7.
George Laurer was a 36-year employee of IBM until his retirement in June 1987.
8.
George Laurer joined IBM in 1951 as a junior engineer.
9.
At IBM, George Laurer was assigned the task of developing barcodes for use in grocery stores.
10.
George Laurer realized that the pattern was ineffective because of smearing during printing.
11.
When he first developed the code, George 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.
12.
George Laurer was the holder of 25 patents and authored 27 published Technical Disclosure Bulletins.
13.
George Laurer lived in Wendell, North Carolina until his death in December 2019.