Dr. Joseph Woodland '47 (mechanical), Hon. '98

Inventor of the bar code

During World War II, Dr. Joseph Woodland '47, Hon. '98 worked as a technical assistant on the Manhattan Project before finishing his B.S. at Drexel.  In 1948, while a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Drexel, he learned of supermarkets' need to track inventory and automate the checkout process.  Convinced such technology would revolutionize the industry, Woodland devoted himself full-time to researching the issue.

Designing such a code proved to be a real challenge.  Woodland's first impulse was to use a polychromatic system, but that yielded a variance that was too great.  He then thought about Morse code, but that didn't provide enough elements to allow the level of detail needed.

He ended up finding the solution not in the aisles of a Piggly Wiggly but at the beach. Inspiration came while he was sketching in the sand.  He made a dash and a dot and a dash and two dots in Morse code.  Then?drawing his hands through the damp sand?he extended those dots and dashes down, creating thin and thick lines.  Enlisting the help of former classmate Bernard Silver '47 (electrical), the two Drexel grads developed a system to decode the lines which called for the early equivalent of a laser light.  The two received U.S. patent 2,612,994 in 1952 for their "Classifying Apparatus and Method."

Identifying IBM as the right place, Woodland went to work for the company in 1951.  However, it wasn't the right time until low-cost laser technology and computing were available over a decade later.  In 1971, the grocery industry solicited proposals for a symbol that would enable automatic capture of embedded data.  Woodland, now at a senior level in mechanical and optical design at IBM, developed the proposal ?IBM 3660 Supermarket Scanning System? for the company based on his earlier research.  On April 3, 1973, the grocery industry chose Woodland's system as the Universal Product Code, or UPC, symbol throughout North America.  Soon after, Woodland helped Europeans develop a European Article Numbering symbol (EAN). 

But even Woodland couldn't have foreseen how his invention would change the world.  Improvements in inventory management, merchandise shipping and parts tracking have yielded higher productivity and quality control in all sectors of the economy.  Used in retail, industrial manufacturing and defense as well as by libraries, airlines and the medical community, bar code technology is now a $16-billion-a-year business.  The Uniform Code Council recently determined that UPC codes serve 600,000 manufacturing companies and are scanned 5 billion times a day?and UPC codes account for only half of today's bar code technology. 

In 1973, Woodland received an Outstanding Contribution Award from IBM, from which he retired in 1987.  In 1992, he also received a National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush.  A member of the prestigious Drexel 100 and the CoE Alumni Circle of Distinction, Woodland received an honorary degree from Drexel in 1998.  He remains active with Drexel as a consultant to promote creativity, invention and entrepreneurialism in the Drexel student body.