William Paul SelmeierWilliam is a name that runs in the family. He and I have the same Great Grand Parents. William Paul Selmeier was a corporate executive for decades and now has a book out called "Spreading the Barcode." As author of it he is listed as Bill Selmeier. It's about how, during "the golden years" at IBM, he helped to make the Barcode, or Universal Product Code (UPC), the universal part of our lives that it now is. He was from Grosse Pointe, Michigan where his father, H. Leroy Selmeier, PhD. was superintendent of the Grosse Pointe school system (an article he wrote about education can be seen at this link). We got to know each other when he moved to Cincinnati to work at Proctor and Gamble after getting his MBA at the University of Michigan. I was an adolescent at the time. He was in systems analysis and explained to me things about how computers worked and what they made possible in industry. This was before anyone dreamed a computer ever could be made small enough for personal use. It was the 1960s. He got an apartment in the Mt. Adams part of Cincinnati which was being turned around by artists painting houses bright colors and occasionally painting designs like huge flowers on them. Spreading the BarcodeHis book "Spreading the Barcode" turns out to be an interesting book, partly because of the human details scattered throughout, partly because of its being an inside picture of how businesses organize and work to generate and spread ideas that serve the world, and partly for the history of the symbol that we now see everyday. For instance, ideas that contributed to the creation of the Barcode developed slowly over decades. But in 1971 computers and stores were ready and competing companies were working on it. At IBM an intensive planning session was organized for a team with specific skills and knowledge. They met at the Campbell House in Louisville, Kentucky for several weeks. Each day they met at 7:29 AM and worked late. They could not leave the room. They could not telephone out and calls were not allowed in. They ate breakfast and lunch in the room. They got an hour off for dinner. They worked through the weekends. They had an unlimited supply of flip chart paper, masking tape and magic markers. The work was intense, at least for most of them. One team member's attention drifted, and, instead of focusing and contributing like everyone else, he began using matches to melt plastic cups into sculptures - one of a Bultaco, which he explained was a hot Spanish Motorcycle. I could see the charts on the walls. I could hear the voices and feel the minds reaching to imagine new solutions. But I was watching all of this from some cosmic position until the melting of the plastic cups. Then I was sitting in the room with them feeling part of it. Touches like these drew me in and left me smiling. As when the U.P.C. was being rolled out. November 13, 1973 was the first meeting in which grocery manufacturers were brought in to be briefed about the new symbol that would need to be printed on all of their packaging. In the back of the Red room was the Packaging Director from Hunt's foods. Sitting next to him was the packaging manager from Delmonte. It was explained that it would be better for the industry if they would standardize the location of the U.P.C. symbol for each category of products. It would speed things up in the checkout line if, for instance, all ketchup bottles had the Barcode in the same location. Instead of discussing the best place for the symbol on their ketchup bottles, the Delmonte and Hunt's packaging representatives conferred as to where to put it to cause the most grief for Heinz. When Heinz started using the U.P.C. symbol, they ignored Delmont and Hunt's and put it in a sensible location that eventually was copied by everyone else, but you have to smile at moments at moments like that. I got the book from Lulu at the
link below: Spreading the Barcode Home
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