AND NOW NOTHING WILL BE RESTRAINED FROM THEM, WHICH THEY HAVE IMAGINED TO DO:

Though he didn't invent the bar code, the late supermarket executive Alan Haberman was the U.P.C. symbol's most important patron. Haberman chaired the 1973 committee that from a range of alternatives selected the black-and-white pattern of vertical stripes that has become largely invisible today due to its omnipresence. It's just part of the landscape.

"Go back to Genesis and read about the Creation," Haberman once said, according to his New York Times obituary. "God says, 'I will call the night "night"; I will call the heavens "heaven."' Naming was important. Then the Tower of Babel came along and messed everything up. In effect, the U.P.C. has put everything back into one language, a kind of Esperanto, that works for everyone."

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