Bar Code pioneer Alan Haberman, also considered one of New York City's top real estate experts with 40 years experience, died on Sunday, at the age of 81.

He died in Newton, Mass., due to heart complications and lung disease, the New York Times reported quoting Alan’s family.

Alan played a very important role in creating barcode 25 years ago. Alan was executive VP and later CEO of First National Stores, a chain of grocery outlets in New England in the late 1960s.

Two graduate students at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, developed the barcode for the use in grocery stores in 1940s. They received a patent in 1952, but because of poor scanning technology the
invention went unused.

Universal Product Code, or U.P.C, the most prevalent type of bar code was not invented by Mr. Haberman, but it’s sheer all time availability and familiar graphic form are primarily accredited to him.

Alan Lloyd Haberman was born on July 27, 1929, in Worcester, Mass. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1951 in American history and literature from Harvard and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1953.

After working for a short period as a stock analyst on Wall Street, he joined Hills Supermarkets, a Long Island chain, as executive vice president. In the mid-1960s, after a merger with E. J. Korvette, Haberman was named as the president of Hills-Korvette
Supermarkets.

Alan was survived by his wife had two children, Arthur Haberman and Jeanette Gannon; two sisters, Elaine Feldman and Arnalee Cohen; and five grandchildren.

Alan was an ambassador for automated product identification in all its forms for decades.

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