lasers. Paul McEnroe argued that’s what grocery employees need. checkout scanners and small laser guns in the form of pistols. Shoot, point, and sell!
These lasers would read strange small black-and-white symbols on objects devised by McEnroe and his IBM colleagues in 1969, which was an absurd picture of the future. He exclaimed that it would expedite lines at supermarkets. The barcode would be the name given to the solution.
At this point in history barcodes had never been used commercially – though the idea had been brewing for decades following a patent filed on 20 October 1949 by one of the engineers who was now part of McEnroe’s team. The IBM engineers were trying to bring barcodes to life. They had a vision of the future where shoppers whizzed through the checkout with lasers scanning every item they wanted to purchase. But IBM’s lawyers had a problem with the future.
“No way,” they said, according to McEnroe, a now-retired engineer. Their fear was “laser suicide.”. What if people intentionally injured their eyes with the scanners and then sued IBM? What if supermarket staff went blind?
