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53-421: Produced by Grantray-Lawrence Animation , headed by Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson, and Robert Lawrence, it was an umbrella series of five segments, each approximately seven minutes long, broadcast on local television stations that aired the show at different times. The series ran initially as a half-hour program made up of three seven-minute segments of a single superhero, separated by a short description of one of

106-440: A UPC-A barcode. There is a one-to-one correspondence between 12-digit number and strip of black bars and white spaces, i.e. there is only one way to represent each 12-digit number visually and there is only one way to represent each strip of black bars and white spaces numerically. The scannable area of every UPC-A barcode follows the pattern S L LLLLLMRRRRR R E, where S (start), M (middle), and E (end) guard patterns are represented

159-571: A deal to subcontract production of The Mighty Thor segments to Paramount Cartoon Studios (the animation division of Paramount Pictures , formerly known as Famous Studios), headed at that time by Fleischer Studios veteran Shamus Culhane . Marvel announced the series in the "Marvel Bullpen Bulletins" of the November 1966 issues, stating in that monthly fan page's hyperbolic style that, "It won't be long before our swingin' super-heroes [ sic ] make their star-studded debut on TV, appearing five nights

212-484: A defined character set with a fixed reference distance that spanned most or preferably all the character. In August 1971, Crouse joined the scanner effort. After several months they had made no progress. They were aware of the RCA bull's eye label that could be scanned with a simple straight line laser scanner, but a readable label was far too large. Although Litton Industries proposed a bull's eye symbol cut in half to reduce

265-555: A demonstration of the label. On 1 December 1972, IBM presented Laurer's proposal to the Super Market Committee in Rochester, Minnesota , the location where IBM would develop the scanner. During the presentation, Crouse gave a lab demonstration where he read UPC-like labels with his ring wand. In addition to reading regular labels, he read the large two-page centerfold label in the proposal booklet. He then turned to

318-454: A digit) are intermixed to help decoding. A UPC (technically, a UPC-A) consists of 12 digits that are uniquely assigned to each trade item. The international GS1 organisation assigns the digits used for both the UPC and the related International Article Number (EAN) barcode. UPC data structures are a component of Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) and follow the global GS1 specification, which

371-532: A five-disc boxset containing the Iron Man segments with the 1994 series titled "Iron Man - Ultimate Collection" was released. Segments were also included with the standalone Iron Man 1994 DVD releases, which was soon bundled as a boxset titled "Iron Man Collection" on November 24, 2008. In April 2008, Liberation Entertainment secured the home media rights to select Marvel shows from Jetix Europe in select European territories, including Hulk. On August 25, 2008,

424-415: A label. Together they defined guard bars and a definition of how to detect the label. The guard bars also provided identification for half label discrimination and training bars for the scanner threshold circuits. Laurer had a complete label definition and proceeded to write his proposal. Previously Crouse had an idea for a simple wand worn like a ring and bracelet. He decided to develop that wand to provide

477-408: A page showing a photo of labeled items sitting on a table. The labels were small and flawed due to the resolution of the printed photo but the wand read many of them. This demonstration showed the robustness of the pure Delta C code. The proposal was accepted. One month later, 1 January 1973 Crouse transferred back to IBM's Advanced Technology group, and Laurer remained with the full responsibility for

530-457: A single pass. This label could be scanned with a simple "X" scanner only slightly more complex than the straight line laser scanner. The next day Baumeister suggested if the label were split into two halves the bar lengths could be cut nearly in half. These two proposals reduced the area from the bull's eye by one third and then one sixth. The image to the right shows the label proposed by Baumeister. He did not specify any specific bar code as that

583-601: A version titled Marvel's Mightiest Super Heroes Gift Set ( EAN #0024543004134). In June 2003, a selection of Hulk segments giving his origin story were released as a bonus feature on Buena Vista Home Entertainment 's DVD release of the 1996 animated television series The Incredible Hulk . In September 2004, Buena Vista Home Entertainment announced that they would release a five-DVD set titled "the 60s Superheroes" on June 28, 2005, which would contain all segments from The Marvel Super Heroes Show , each on their own disc. By February 2005, however, Buena Vista announced that

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636-810: A week — that's right, five — count 'em — five nights a week, for a half-hour each night. So you've just got time to make sure your set's in good working order — check your local paper for time and station — and prepare to have a ball!" For WNAC-TV in Boston, Arthur Pierce portrayed Captain America in live-action segments for the show. Actors portraying other characters, including Dr. Doom, Hulk, and Bucky, also appeared in live-action segments. The segments were scripted by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel . Appearing in guest roles were: Each episode consists of three chapters. Sources: In 1985, Prism Entertainment released several segments from

689-506: A width of at least 9 times the x-dimension, must be present on each side of the scannable area of the UPC-A barcode. For a GTIN-12 number encoded in a UPC-A barcode, the first and last digits of the human-readable interpretation are always placed outside the symbol in order to indicate the quiet zones that are necessary for UPC barcode scanners to work properly. The UPC-A barcode is visually represented by strips of bars and spaces that encode

742-414: Is a technique used to detect any odd number of bit errors in a bit stream. They decided to use odd on one half and even on the other. This would provide additional indication of which half ticket was being read. This meant that every bar width had to be read accurately to provide a good reading. It also meant every space would also be known. Requiring every bit width to be read precisely basically nullified

795-503: Is based on international standards. Some retailers, such as clothing and furniture, do not use the GS1 system, instead using other barcode symbologies or article number systems. Some retailers use the EAN/UPC barcode symbology, but do not use a GTIN for products sold only in their own stores. Research indicates that the adoption and diffusion of the UPC stimulated innovation and contributed to

848-441: Is determined by multiplying the x-dimension and the module width (1, 2, 3, or 4 units) of each bar (space). Since the guard patterns each include two bars, and each of the 12 digits of the UPC-A barcode consists of two bars and two spaces, all UPC-A barcodes consist of exactly (3 × 2) + (12 × 2) = 30 bars, of which 6 represent guard patterns and 24 represent numerical digits. The x-dimension for

901-512: Is upside-down). After seeing a S (start) or E (end) guard pattern (they are the same, bar-space-bar , whichever direction they are read), the scanner will first see odd parity digits, if scanning left-to-right, or even parity digits, if scanning right-to-left. With the parity/direction information, an upside-down symbol will not confuse the scanner. When confronted with an upside-down symbol, the scanner may simply ignore it (many scanners alternate left-to-right and right-to-left scans, so they will read

954-405: Is used worldwide for tracking trade items in stores. The chosen symbology has bars (or spaces) of exactly 1, 2, 3, or 4 units wide each; each decimal digit to be encoded consists of two bars and two spaces chosen to have a total width of 7 units, in both an "even" and an "odd" parity form, which enables being scanned in either direction. Special "guard patterns" (3 or 5 units wide, not encoding

1007-670: The Delta C advantage except for the Delta C reference measurement. Only the strange character set and the size of the label remains as a shadow of the Delta C code. The size was still that calculated for pure Delta C. If the label size had been properly recalculated, taking into account the required bar width measurements the label would have been far too large to be acceptable. Mechanical engineering and electronic circuit design commonly require worst case designs using known tolerances. Many engineers working with bar codes had little experience with such things and used somewhat intuitive methods. This

1060-407: The Delta C patent used seven printable increments or units where two bars and two spaces would be printed. This yielded twenty combinations of characters, but there were two pairs that when read by Delta C rules yielded the same code for the pair. Since eighteen characters were not enough Laurer tried adding one unit to the character set. This yielded twenty-six Delta C characters which could provide

1113-425: The S (start) and after the E (end) guard patterns. The UPC-A's left-hand side digits (the digits to the left of the M (middle) guard pattern) have odd parity, which means the total width of the black bars is an odd number of modules. On the contrary, the right-hand side digits have even parity. Consequently, a UPC scanner can determine whether it is scanning a symbol from left-to-right or from right-to-left (the symbol

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1166-432: The S (start), M (middle), and E (end) guard patterns. The S (start) and E (end) guard patterns are 3 modules wide and use the pattern bar-space-bar , where each bar and space is one module wide. The M (middle) guard pattern is 5 modules wide and uses the pattern space-bar-space-bar-space , where each bar and space is also one module wide. In addition, a UPC-A symbol requires a quiet zone (extra space of 9 modules wide) before

1219-413: The UPC-A 12-digit number. Each digit is represented by a unique pattern of 2 bars and 2 spaces. The bars and spaces are variable width, i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4 modules wide. The total width for a digit is always 7 modules; consequently, UPC-A 12-digit number requires a total of 7×12 = 84 modules . A complete UPC-A is 95 modules wide: 84 modules for the digits (L and R sections) combined with 11 modules for

1272-464: The UPC-A at the nominal size is 0.33 mm (0.013"). Nominal symbol height for UPC-A is 25.9 mm (1.02"). The bars forming the S (start), M (middle), and E (end) guard patterns, are extended downwards by 5 times x-dimension, with a resulting nominal symbol height of 27.55 mm (1.08"). This also applies to the bars of the first and last numerical digit of UPC-A barcode. UPC-A can be reduced or magnified anywhere from 80% to 200%. A quiet zone, with

1325-678: The United Kingdom and on May 3, 2010 and May 7, 2010, they re-released the Hulk sets in the United Kingdom and Germany respectively. In 2011, the company began releasing stand-alone DVD sets of the segments which edited them similarity to the Maximum releases. In 2012, the company released a four-disc set that contained single volumes of the Captain America , Hulk , The Mighty Thor and Iron Man segments respectively, to coincide with

1378-437: The area, it was still too large and presented the same ink smear printing problems as the RCA symbol. The redundancy and checking ability were removed completely. They were also aware of the many proposals from around the world, none of which were feasible. In the spring of 1972, Baumeister announced a breakthrough. He proposed a label with bars that were slightly longer than the distance across all bars that needed to be read in

1431-440: The comics and manipulated to minimize the need for animation production. The cartoons were presented as a series of static comic-strip panel images; generally the only movement involved the lips when a character spoke, the eyes, and the occasional arm or leg, or a fully animated black silhouette. The series used the original stories largely in their entirety, showcasing Jack Kirby , Steve Ditko and Don Heck art, among others, from

1484-532: The company released a two-disc set of the Hulk segments, re-edited into 13 20-minute episodes, in the United Kingdom and Germany. After Liberation closed its UK branch at the end of October, Clear Vision took over home media distribution of the Marvel properties. The company first released the Iron Man segments on April 19, 2010 with the 1994 series as a six-disc boxset titled "Iron Man: The Ultimate Collection" in

1537-670: The council. The Symbol Selection Committee finally chose to implement the IBM proposal designed by George J. Laurer , but with a slight modification to the font in the human readable area. The first UPC-marked item ever to be scanned at a retail checkout was a 10-pack (50 sticks) of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum, purchased at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio , at 8:01 a.m. on 26 June 1974. The NCR cash register rang up 67 cents. The shopping cart also contained other barcoded items but

1590-418: The earliest such adaptations for electronic media. Before then, it did sub-contracted work on Top Cat , The Jetsons , The Dick Tracy Show , and The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo . This article related to an animation studio is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Universal Product Code The Universal Product Code ( UPC or UPC code ) is a barcode symbology that

1643-518: The growth of international retail supply chains. Wallace Flint proposed an automated checkout system in 1932 using punched cards . Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland , a graduate student from Drexel Institute of Technology , developed a bull's-eye-style code and applied for the patent in 1949. In the 1960s and early 1970s, railroads in North America experimented with multicolor bar codes for tracking railcars , but this system

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1696-701: The gum was the first one picked up at the checkout. A facsimile of the gum packet went on display at the Smithsonian Institution 's American history museum in Washington, D.C. Murray Eden was a consultant on the team that created the Universal Product Code barcode. As Chairman of a committee of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he helped "select a symbol that would endure

1749-683: The inevitable rush of technology that lay ahead." He chose the font, and he came up with the idea to add numbers to the bottom, which is a fail-safe system, in case the barcode reader is not working correctly. Around late 1969, IBM at Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina 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. Delta B compared bar widths to space width to code bits. This

1802-459: The label. Dymo Industries , makers of handheld printing devices insisted that the code be character independent, so that handheld printing devices could produce the bar code in store if the items were not bar-coded by the manufacturers. Dymo's proposal was accepted by IBM and incorporated in IBM's latest proposal. It was decided that the two halves of the label should have a different set of numeric characters. The character set Laurer derived from

1855-633: The other four heroes. It has also been broadcast as a mixture of various heroes in a half-hour timeslot, and as individual segments as filler or within a children's TV program . The segments were " Captain America ", " The Incredible Hulk ", " Iron Man ", " The Mighty Thor " and " The Sub-Mariner ". Sixty-five half-hour episodes of three seven-minute chapters were produced, for a total of 195 segments that ran initially in broadcast syndication from September to December 1966. The series, produced in color, had extremely limited animation produced by xerography , consisting of photocopied images taken directly from

1908-494: The pairs he would measure one bar width in each of the pairs to distinguish them from each other. For each pair those bars would be one or two units wide. Laurer did not apply Baumeister's equations to this set. He felt just one bar width measurement would not be too serious. As it turned out it would have required over fifty percent increase in width and height for an area increase of more than double. Laurer later admitted these four characters in each set were responsible for most of

1961-529: The period fans and historians call the Silver Age of comic books . Stan Lee , Marvel's editor and art director at the time, said in 2004 that he believed publisher Martin Goodman negotiated the deal with Grantray-Lawrence and that Lawrence chose the characters to be used. Lawrence rented Lee and his wife a penthouse apartment at 30 East 60th Street, near Madison Avenue , for Lee's use while he worked on

2014-529: The release of Avengers Assemble . Grantray-Lawrence Animation Grantray-Lawrence Animation was an animation studio active from 1954 to 1968 and founded by Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson (hence "Grant-Ray"), and Robert L. Lawrence . This animation company produced commercials and low-budget animated television shows until it went bankrupt in 1968 and its distributor, Krantz Films , took over production. The best-known of those animated shows are its adaptations of superheroes from Marvel Comics ,

2067-411: The release was off the schedule. In May 2004, Maximum Entertainment released two boxsets that each contained one disc for the Captain America , Iron Man , Sub-Mariner and Thor shows, alongside The Avengers: United They Stand . Both box sets made up all the respective segments from the series. The Hulk segments were not included due to Fox Kids Europe previously sub-licensing them to Buena Vista

2120-451: The same way on every UPC-A barcode and the L (left) and R (right) sections collectively represent the 12 numerical digits that make each UPC-A unique. The first digit L indicates a particular number system to be used by the following digits. The last digit R is an error detecting check digit , that allows some errors to be detected in scanning or manual entry. The guard patterns separate the two groups of six numerical digits and establish

2173-412: The scanner read errors. David Savir, a mathematician, was given the task of proving the symbol could be printed and would meet the reliability requirements, and was most likely unaware of Baumeister's equations. He and Laurer added two more digits to the ten for error detection and correction . Then they decided to add odd/even parity to the number of units filled with bars in each side. Odd/even parity

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2226-462: The series on VHS as part of their "Marvel Comics Video Library" series. Best Film & Video Corp. continued this range in the Early-1990s under their "Marvel Video!" imprint. Goldstar Video released two compilation releases which contained three videocassettes each: Marvel Superheroes: Triple Pack #1 ( UPC #024543004127) and Marvel's Mightiest Heroes: Triple Pack #2 . Fox Video released

2279-470: The series. (Lee lived in Hewlett Harbor , New York , on Long Island , at the time.) Lee recalled, "I really don't remember any reaction from the Marvel artists involved. I wish I could claim to have written the [theme song] lyrics, because I think they're brilliant, but alas, I didn't". The songs were written by Jacques Urbont . In the meantime, Steve Krantz (who was distributing the series), made

2332-426: The standards used to create them. Below is a description of all possible number systems with the corresponding 12-digit UPC-A numbering scheme L LLLLLRRRRR R , where L denotes the numbering system digit and R the check digit. The UPC includes a check digit to detect common data entry errors. For example, UPC-A codes choose the check digit x 12 {\displaystyle x_{12}} to satisfy

2385-486: The symbol on a subsequent pass) or recognize the digits and put them in the right order. There is another property in the digit encoding. The right-hand side digits are the optical inverse of the left-hand side digits, i.e. black bars are turned into white spaces and vice versa. For example, the left-hand side "4" is space×1 - bar×1 - space×3 - bar×2 , meanwhile the right-hand side "4" is bar×1 - space×1 - bar×3 - space×2 . The number of UPC-A and UPC-E barcodes are limited by

2438-405: The timing. UPC-A 042100005264 is equivalent to UPC-E 425261 with the "EOEEOO" parity pattern, which is defined by UPC-A number system 0 and UPC-A check digit 4. UPC-A barcodes can be printed at various densities to accommodate a variety of printing and scanning processes. The significant dimensional parameter is called x-dimension (width of single module element). The width of each bar (space)

2491-468: The two sets of decimal characters but it also added fourteen percent to the width of the label and thereby the height. This would be a thirty percent increase in area or a label of 1.7 in × 1.03 in (43 mm × 26 mm). Laurer felt this was not acceptable. Laurer returned to the original character set with twenty characters but four of those were two pairs with the same Delta C reading. He decided to use them all. To distinguish between

2544-420: The year prior. On August 1, 2005, Maximum re-released Iron Man as a two-disc standalone set. On May 21, 2007, Maximum re-released each of the respective segments on separate two-disc sets, with each episode re-edited into continuous, half-hour segments. The sets, alongside the Iron Man set, were later bundled as part of the "Marvel Superheroes Classic Collection" boxset, released in November 2007. In April 2008,

2597-409: Was about six inches by three inches which was too large. Crouse suggested that Laurer use his Delta C bar code and provided a copy of his patent that had a sample alphanumeric character set and rules to generate other size alphabets. This reduced the label size to about 1.5 in × 0.9 in (38 mm × 23 mm). Later Laurer asked Crouse for assistance in how the scanner could detect

2650-786: Was eventually abandoned and replaced with a radio-based system called Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) . In 1973, a group of trade associations from the grocery industry formed the Uniform Product Code Council (UPCC) which, with the help of consultants Larry Russell and Tom Wilson of McKinsey & Company , defined the numerical format that formed the basis of the Uniform Product Code. Technology firms including Charegon, IBM , Litton-Zellweger, Pitney Bowes-Alpex, Plessey-Anker, RCA , Scanner Inc., Singer, and Dymo Industries /Data General, put forward alternative proposals for symbol representations to

2703-477: Was extremely sensitive to ink spread, where improper levels of ink or pressure would cause both edges of a bar to spread outward or shrink in. In mid 1971, William "Bill" Crouse invented a new bar code called Delta C. It achieved four times the characters per inch as Delta B. Delta C achieved its higher performance by only using leading to leading or trailing to trailing edges which was unaffected by uniform ink spread. The code provided best performance when it had

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2756-487: Was the cause of the poor performance of the Delta B code and quite likely the failure of RCA's bull's eye scanner. The following table shows the workable labels, available in the early 1970s, with their sizes. This is assuming a bull's eye with the same information and reliable readability. Each UPC-A barcode consists of a scannable strip of black bars and white spaces above a sequence of 12 numerical digits. No letters , characters or other content of any kind may appear on

2809-419: Was well understood. Except for the bar coding and ten digits the UPC label today is his proposal. Shortly after that Baumeister transferred to another area of RTP. Laurer proceeded to define the details of the label and write a proposal. N.J. Woodland was assigned as planner for the project and aided Laurer with writing his proposal. Laurer's first attempt with a bar code used Delta B. The resulting label size

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