David J. Collins, Chairman of A2B Tracking Board of Directors, died at his home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on Saturday, March 12, 2022. He was 86.
Widely considered as the “father of the barcode industry” and an expert in Automatic Identification Technology (AIT), David is named on several US patents related to the barcode that have enabled broad, global adoption of the technology. Barcodes, now commonplace, are scanned at an estimated rate of over 7 billion times a day in retail, manufacturing and service industries around the world.
In 1959, Mr. Collins joined Sylvania Electric Products at its Applied Research Lab in Waltham, Massachusetts. There he created a system to track railroad cars labeled with a unique pattern of red, white, blue, and black bars. Bolted to the side of railroad cars on three-foot tall metal plates, these early “bar codes” could be read by laser scanners positioned along the tracks, accurately identifying the cars as they sped by.
Convinced this technique had applications well beyond the railroad industry, Mr. Collins left Sylvania in 1968 to found his own company, Computer Identics Corporation, in Westwood, Massachusetts. By 1970, the company had developed the first black and white barcodes, as well as helium-neon laser scanners capable of reading them, allowing other industries to benefit from them.
The first applications were for a General Motors assembly line, scanning axles destined for new Pontiacs. Computer Identics also delivered the first scanners used for package recognition, early versions of the ones now used by FedEx and UPS to deliver millions of items every day.
At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Computer Identics scanners read the barcodes printed on badges for every athlete, journalist, and staff member. This novel security feature was so successful that every Olympic Games since then has adopted badges with integrated barcodes.
After stepping away from day-to-day management of Computer Identics in 1987, David Collins formed a consulting, research, and educational firm called the Data Capture Institute where he advised on advanced barcode solutions for large multinational corporations and for branches of the US Government, including the FAA, the Department of Defense, and the FDA.
In 2011, David Collins received a US Congressional Citation for his role as the “Father of the Barcode Industry”. RI Senator Jack Reed and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse along with Governor Chafee and US Representative Cicilline were on hand for the awards at the A2B Tracking offices in Portsmouth, RI for a Barcode 50th anniversary celebration.
As the A2B Tracking Chairman of the Board of Directors, David consulted on numerous AIT projects and provided long term strategy over many years. Mr. Collins was very active in the Auto-ID and Data Capture (AIDC) community and was one of the co-founders of AIM and a charter member of the AIDC 100.
To learn more about David Collins’ pioneering role in the development and history of the barcode and to hear more about his influential work bringing the technology into the mainstream read this article from the Wall Street Journal and watch this Ted Talk from 2017.
