George J. Laurer, whose design of the ubiquitous vertically striped bar code sped supermarket checkout lines, parcel deliveries and assembly lines and even transformed human beings, including airline ...

As shoppers pack stores in search of Black Friday deals, a North Carolina born invention keeps the checkout lines moving: the Universal Product Code. Each beep of the scanner can be traced back to ...

The hype about new technologies often follows a predictable pattern. We’re told a new technology is about to change the world, and then it’s often labeled a failure when it doesn’t make an immediate ...