The Barcode: How a Team Created One of the World's Most Ubiquitous Technologies

This is much more than just a book about how the barcode came to be and how it changed commerce in the world.It gives glimpses into the lives of the men and women who made it happen.Don’t expect over flowery adjectives. The author is an engineer after all.But what Paul endured as a man, father and husband are remarkable.

This was an interesting story of a truly remarkable achievement. It was good to see more of the engineers who were crucial in the development of the UPC (Universal Product Code) finally get some credit long overdue.I grew up in the shadow of the UPC development team. My father was one of the engineers on the team whose intellectual breakthroughs on the code are generally attributed to his team lead rather than to him. At least this book mentions his name. I am sorry he has already passed. Maybe this book would’ve helped cure some of his bitterness every time he saw a barcode. Maybe not. He never went to any store. My mother did all the shopping.I find it very naïve on the part of management not to have applied for patents and then to have placed the patents in the public domain. Doing so would’ve helped settle these types of disputes, not only among engineers around the world and within IBM, but also on their very own team. Doing so might’ve kept others from labeling working on the code team as “The worst job of my life.”