Norman Joseph Woodland, American inventor, co-created the bar code (died 2012)

Norman Joseph Woodland was an American inventor and engineer, best known as one of the inventors of the barcode, for which he received a patent in October 1952. Later, employed by IBM, he developed the format which became the ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) of product labeling and check-out stands.

A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D), can be scanned by special optical scanners, called barcode readers, of which there are several types.