Bernard Silver (September 21, 1924 – August 28, 1963) was an electrical engineer and early developer of

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

technology alongside Norman Joseph Woodland. Silver earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the

Drexel Institute of Technology Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel In ...

in 1947. In 1948 Silver paired with Norman Joseph Woodland to come up with an automated way to read product data after overhearing the conversation of a local grocery store president. Their initial results, a system of lines and circles based on

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

, was replaced with a bulls eye pattern so it could be scanned from any direction. Silver and Woodland filed a patent for their system on October 20, 1949. was granted on October 7, 1952. "The two men eventually sold their patent to Philco for $15,000 — all they ever made from their invention." During his career Silver served as a physics instructor at Drexel and as vice-president of Electro Nite Inc. He died August 28, 1963, of

bronchopneumonia Bronchopneumonia is a subtype of pneumonia. It is the acute inflammation of the Bronchus, bronchi, accompanied by inflamed patches in the nearby lobules of the lungs. citing: Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition, Copyright 2014 ...

due to acute myelogenous leukemia at the age of 38. In 2011 Silver, alongside Woodland, was inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a US patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also operate ...

. Google featured a doodle of their logo as a

to recognize the anniversary of Bernard Silver at October 7, 2009.

References

1924 births 1963 deaths Drexel University alumni 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors {{US-inventor-stub