I started the Coach4aday blog in 2014 and have done daily posts on one topic for each year. In 2014 my daily posts were on the “Beer of the Day”, 2015 it was “A Friend of a Friend”, 2016 I wrote about “North Carolina”, and in 2017 it was “Colleges and Universities”.
The one consistent piece of feedback I have received with this blog is the 2015 series on “A Friend of a Friend”. Readers and blog followers said please bring it back. The stats also back that up with the number of views each of those posts received.
So in 2018 two things will happen with the Coach4aday blog; One I plan to collaborate with a friend named John Rancke and revisit some of those 2015 “A Friend of a Friend” posts and do some new ones with a slightly different twist. I write the posts on odd numbered days each month and John handles the even numbered days.
In addition John and I will write about things we both are interested which will include basketball, food, people, music, our granddaughters, and great stories.
If you want to follow the blog via email go to the bottom right of the post and click the follow button.
My twitter handle is @coach4aday2 if you want to follow the blog that way.
John’s twitter handle is @JohnRancke if you want to reach out to him.
Universal Product Code was invented in North Carolina
Post was originally published on January 15, 2016 and has been updated
In 1969 a product was invented in North Carolina that is part of almost every item sold in the world today. The product is the Universal Product Code (UPC). UPC consists of 12 numeric digits, that are uniquely assigned to each trade item.
They are given out by GS1 US, a nonprofit group that sets standards for international commerce.
Here’s how it works: Businesses pay to join GS1 US, and in exchange, it assigns each member its own identification number that appears as the first part of its UPC.
Companies usually need different UPC codes for each product they sell, even if it is just a different size. So companies will add more numbers to their GS1-issued identification code to identify each of their products. Each UPC can be used to produce a specific barcode that can then be printed out and attached to products or, ideally, incorporated into the product design so that it is easily scanned at the register.
In 1969 IBM in Research Triangle Park just outside Raleigh NC assigned George Laurer to determine how to make a supermarket scanner and label. In late 1970, Heard Baumeister provided equations to calculate characters per inch achievable by two IBM bar codes, Delta A and Delta B. In February, 1971, Baumeister joined Laurer. By 1972 the scanner and UPC became a reality.
George Laurer started work at IBM in 1951 and was a 36-year veteran before he retired in June 1987. He also is the holder of 25 patents issued by US Patent Office.
There is a great article in the NY Times on Laurer and his invention. The one part of his story that I loved was he didn’t follow instructions. He was told to invent a round UPC but he found out that didn’t work as good the linear one.
Read the article below
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/who-made-that-universal-product-code.html?_r=0
coach4aday 
One of the best article ever seen on upc code . love the concept and idea you presented in your article .Want to test out our Product API? Use our UPC lookup tool to search our product database for any given UPC code