Innovations
Compact Disc Technology
The term "digital" came to mean more than fingers and toes when a Battelle scientist—unhappy with the sound and quality of the hi-fi audio systems of the 1970s—pursued an idea that would become the concept for optical digital recording. His numerical creation looked like rows and rows of little black dots and spaces or ones and zeros. Today, this design element is the technique used to record digital information on compact discs that are manufactured and marketed worldwide.
Office Copier Machine (Xerography)
Battelle played a significant role in the development of the xerography process, which led to Xerox and the office copier explosion. Today, Xerox's assets are worth billions of dollars—a phenomenal return on an investment that, at one time, was simply a wooden box housing a number of electrophotography technologies developed by Battelle experts.
Universal Product Code
Battelle had a leading role in helping develop the machine-readable bar code symbol that is now found on millions of consumer products. The immediate impact from this fascinating technology was at supermarkets and retail stores, where products were quickly scanned at "speed" checkouts. Today the Universal Product Code, or UPC, is a critical part of the entire product cycle—from manufacturer through distributor to consumer.
Fiber Optics
Through a joint venture with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone and Mitsubishi Corporation, Battelle established Photonic Integration Research, Inc., or PIRI, in 1987 to manufacture fiber-optic circuits for telecommunications and related fields. Overtime, the venture reached a market value of $1.8 billion. Mitsubishi and Battelle continue to work closely together in serving customers in areas such as product development, technology commercialization, optical networking and biotechnology.