Margalit Fox: It was born on a beach six decades ago, the product of a pressing need, an intellectual spark and the sweep of a young man’s fingers through the sand.
The result adorns almost every product of contemporary life, including groceries, wayward luggage and, if you are a traditionalist, the newspaper you are holding.
The man on the beach that day was a mechanical-engineer-in-training named N. Joseph Woodland. With that transformative stroke of his fingers — yielding a set of literal lines in the sand — Mr. Woodland, who died on Sunday at 91, conceived the modern bar code.
(thanks, Mark)
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