International Business Machines Corporation Search this
Extent:
3.5 Cubic feet (11 boxes, 1 map-folder)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Articles
Transcripts
Technical drawings
Notebooks
Correspondence
Examinations (documents)
Notes
Patents
Date:
1943-2012
Summary:
The collection documents the career of N. Joseph Woodland, who, along with Bernard Silver, invented and developed the bar code.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents the career of N. Joseph Woodland, who, along with Bernard Silver, invented and developed the bar code. The collection includes papers relating to Woodland's early life and education, such as exams and transcripts; papers relating to his work with IBM, including correspondence, notes and notebooks, and technical drawings; patents; photographs; awards and honors; articles.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into five series.
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1943-2012
Series 2: International Business machines Corporation (IBM), 1951-2006
Series 3: Node Code, 1986-2003
Series 4: Consulting, 1987-2000
Series 5: Audiovisual Materials, 1990-2011
Biographical / Historical:
Norman Joseph Woodland (1921-2012) was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Woodland also served during World War II in the Army as a technical assistant for the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University (1947) and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Syracuse University (1956). He joined the Drexel University faculty as a lecturer in mechanical engineering in 1947.
In 1948, Woodland became aware of the need for supermarket inventory control through automated checkout. He conceived of the idea of using printed parallel stripes of varying widths to encode prices of items in 1949. Woodland, together with Bernard Silver (1921-1963), an electrical engineer, and fellow Drexel University faculty lecturer, defined a system to exploit the bar code invention to automatically capture item prices as well as inventory data. Woodland and Silver were issued US patent 2,612,994 for a classifying apparatus and method on October 7, 1952. Woodland and Silver sold their patent for $15,000 to Philco in 1961.
Woodland joined IBM in 1951 as a mechanical designer and later worked as a senior planner in artificial intelligence in general and expert systems. While at IBM, Woodland identified and applied existing and emerging technologies to enhance planned IBM products and systems. He worked in store systems marketing, long-range market planning, product planning, and artificial intelligence development. In 1983, he received an IBM technical sabbatical to work on expert systems and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and to study these systems in use in Japan. A significant portion of Woodland's career focused on the bar code in general and supermarket automated check-out processes. His work laid the foundation for the creation of the universal product code (UPC symbol), for which ), for which he was an integral part of the IBM team's winning design, in his role as the person responsible for IBM's UPC symbol proposal to the grocery industry's symbol selection committee.
In 1992, Woodland won the National Medal of Technology for his invention and contribution to the commercialization of bar code technology, which improved productivity in every industrial sector and gave rise to the bar code industry. Woodland holds six patents.
Woodland married Jacqueline Woodland (née Blumberg) in 1951 and they had two daughters, Betsy Karpenkopf and Susan Woodland.
Provenance:
Donated to the Archives Center in 2017 by Susan Woodland, the daughter of N. Joseph Woodland.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project, conducted by H. David Maxey from 1986 through 2002, created a collection of archival materials documenting the history and development of speech synthesis technology. Maxey collaborated with Dr. Bernard Finn, Elliot Sivowitch and Harold Wallace of the National Museum of American History's Division of Information, Technology, and Society.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents a project done by H. David Maxey in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. The collection consists of administrative files containing correspondence, project reports, and other infomation about the Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project. The project files, arranged geographically and alphabetically contains information about specific speech synthesis projects and inventions. The reprints series consists of reprints of articles which Maxey collected and organized separately. This series is organized both numerically and alphabetically. The audiovisual materials contain the recordings of talks, meetings, and samples of speech synthesis described in the projects outlined in the project files.
Arrangement:
The original SSSHP numbers assigned by Dave Maxey are included in portions of the Container List. They are the basis for the organization of Maxey's original index to and description of the collection. Maxey assigned the numbers sequentially in the order he received each numbered item.
The collection is arranged into four series.
Series 1, Administrative Files,1986-2002
Series 2, Project Files, 1939-1999
Series 3, Reprints, 1939-1999
Series 4: Audiovisual Materials,1939-1999
Subseries 1, ¼" Open Reel Audiotape
Subseries 2, Audiocassettes
Subseries 3, Miscellaneous
Subseries 4, Reference and Protection Audiotapes and CDs
Biographical / Historical:
The Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project, conducted by H. David Maxey from 1986 through 2002, created a collection of archival materials including sound recordings documenting the history and development of speech synthesis technology. Maxey collaborated with Dr. Bernard Finn of the National Museum of American History's Division of Information, Technology, and Society. Elliot Sivowitch and Harold Wallace of the same division served as Smithsonian liaisons with the project.
"Speech synthesis technology" refers to the results of a long, evolutionary process in which researchers learned to create artificial sounds that people would interpret as speech. As early as the eighteenth century scientists were inventing mechanical machines to create sounds similar to human speech. Later electronics led to additional developments, The Voder was one of the earliest examples which was demonstrated to wide acclaim at the 1939 New York World's Fair. However, it was the widespread use of computers that led to the greatest progress in the field of speech synthesis.
Speech synthesis is the process by which a computer speaks. By contrast, speech recognition is when a computer can interpret spoken language. The application of both of these capabilities has been important for creating assistive computer technology for the visually impaired (speech recognition) and for individuals unable to speak (speech synthesis).
Among the leading researchers and organizations involved with the development of speech synthesis technologies are the Anerican Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Bell Telephone Laboratories, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dennis H. Klatt, and Ray Kurzweil.
Today speech synthesis is a common feature of daily life from the cultured voice on the GPS saying exactly which road to take to making a train reservation on the telephone. However, many speech synthesis developers continue to explore and design methods to make the speech sound less mechanical, with the ultimate challenge being natural sounding speech that shows emotion.
Dave Maxey's dedication to the project, with support from members of the staff of the National Museum of American History, has ensured the preservation of materials documenting the early history of electronic and computer engineered synthetic speech.
Related Materials:
Artifacts related to this collection are in the Division of Work & Industry, Electricity Collections.
Provenance:
The collection was created for the Smithsonian Institution from 1986-2002 by Dave Maxey in collaboration with Dr. Bernard Finn of the National Museum of American History's Division of Information, Technology, and Society, assisted by Elliot Sivowitch and Harold Wallace of the same division.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Only reference copies of audiovisual materials may be used.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
