Intermec celebrates 40 years

Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 13 Nov 2006 22:57

EVERETT, Wash., Nov. 10, 2006 - as the greeting card says, "Lordy Lordy, Guess Who's 40?" Intermec Inc., which today commemorated its 40th anniversary with a series of celebrations at its offices around the world culminating with festivities at its worldwide headquarters here led by President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Winter.

Intermec was founded in 1966 as Interface Mechanisms, a Washington state start-up company developing dual-image tape, a machine readable code used to compile data for the phototypesetting industry. One of the company's early leaders, Dr. Dave Allais, went on to invent Code 39, still one of the world's most widely used bar code symbologies.

Today Intermec is a $900 million company doing business in more than 80 countries. It is the largest public company based in Snohomish County, with more than 2,600 employees worldwide.

Intermec took heat in 2004 and 2005 for holding RFID technology hostage. The company had a rich patent portfolio, which other providers - chiefly Symbol - saw as inherent to RFID technology, therefore unavoidable, and not in spirit with the RFID standards that the industry had written for itself, with both Intermec and Symbol sitting on those committees. Those claims were arguable, and two years later, the adoptees seem to have put the speed governor on RFID adoption, not the providers.

During Intermec's 40 years as a leading company in the automatic data capture industry, the company has invented such technologies as the first on-demand bar code printer in 1971; "smart battery" technology that makes the batteries in laptops and other electronics last longer; wireless local area network (WLAN) communication systems; and the company holds a vast portfolio of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) patents.

In the past 18 months, Intermec has introduced two innovations under the newly launched Intellibeam(TM) brand: laser scanning technology based on MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) and the first near-far auto-focus area imager capable of reading 1D and 2D bar codes at distance of 6 inches to over 50 feet.

"While we're all proud of what Intermec has accomplished in the past 40 years, what I'm most proud of are the technological innovations that continue to flow from this company," Winter said. "This company has a rich history of innovation yet Intermec is a company that has just begun creating its best technologies to help our customers be more successful."

Comments on this story

click here to add a comment