Alan Haberman, barcode advocate, dies at 81

A man whose impact on the world is nearly unfathomable died Sunday. Alan L. Haberman, supermarket-executive-turned-barcode-champion, died in Newton Massachusetts from complications of heart and lung disease at the age of 81. While he did not invent those ubiquitous black and white stripes — that honor belongs to Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver — Haberman did lead the campaign to make barcodes the universal standard for electronic product encoding. He chaired the committee responsible for the designation of the zebra-like markings, which in 1973 adopted a barcode designed by George J. Laurer of IBM. In his work at the Uniform Code Council (now known as GS1 US), he pushed for acceptance of multiple standards, including RFID . His obituary can be read in-full at the source link below. Alan Haberman, barcode advocate, dies at 81 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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