George J. Laurer, whose design of the vertically striped bar code sped supermarket checkout lines, parcel deliveries and assembly lines and even transformed human beings, including airline passengers and hospital patients, into traceable inventory items, died on Dec. 5 at his home in Wendell, N.C., near Raleigh. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his son Craig.

The Universal Product Code made its official debut in 1974, when a scanner registered 67 cents for a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. (One of the original scanners is at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; the package of gum was bought and retained by a Marsh executive.)

“It was cheap, and it was needed,” Mr. Laurer told The New York Times in 2009. “And it is reliable.”

And it revolutionized commerce.

The bar code had evolved over several decades, a product of several collaborators and some fluky coincidences.