AIM, the association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, has awarded its highest honor, the Richard R. Dilling Award, to two individuals who have made major contributions to the development and growth of the AIDC industry.
The 2003 Dilling Award was presented posthumously to George Goldberg. The 2004 Dilling Award was presented to Craig K. Harmon.
The award this year was co-sponsored by AIDC 100, a peer-elected, non-profit organization of professionals and others who have significantly contributed to the growth and advancement of the AIDC industry.
The Richard R. Dilling Award is AIM’s highest award. It is presented annually to an individual for outstanding career-long contributions to the advancement of AIDC technologies in different industries.
George Goldberg, who died December 10, 2003, entered the AIDC industry in 1973 as a consultant to a company manufacturing bar code film masters. In 1975, he and his wife Teddy co-founded their own company, GGX Associates, a marketer of film masters and pressure sensitive labels for UPC and other bar code applications. The company was sold in 1992.
There were no publications in the mid-1970s covering the fledgling AIDC industry. To fill this need, Goldberg began publishing SCAN Newsletter in 1977 -- with fewer than 100 subscribers. SCAN was a unique management and marketing newsletter covering worldwide developments in bar coding, radio frequency (RFID and RFDC), and related AIDC technologies. In 1982, SCAN -- joined by AIM USA -- established the prestigious, annual Percival Award recognizing special contributions to AIDC by individuals or organizations from the user community. When SCAN Newsletter was sold to Corry Publishing in 1996, it had paid subscribers in twenty-six countries.
Goldberg was co-founder of AIDC 100, an organization of the leading professionals from the AIDC industry. Under his leadership and guidance, the AIDC 100 Industry Library and Special Collection was established at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The AIDC 100 Archive at Stony Brook University Libraries identifies, acquires and preserves a comprehensive record that documents the invention, development and current state of the AIDC (automatic identification & data capture) industry. It also functions as a central, permanent repository for important documentation on the industry.
Craig K. Harmon, president of QED Systems, is also a charter member of AIDC 100. Harmon’s contributions to the AIDC industry have spanned more than three decades. He founded Q.E. D. Systems in 1981 and serves as the president of an organization that provides standards development, educational, advisory and system design services, focusing on electronic commerce/business technologies including bar code technology, two-dimensional symbols, EDI, radio frequency communications and RFID.
He is an author and his publications ("Reading Between the Lines --An Introduction to Bar Code Technology;" "Lines of Communication -- Bar Code & Data Collection Technology in the 90s," and "Reading Between the Lines -- 21st Century") are considered authoritative works on bar code technology, data collection, system design and RFID.
Harmon is an industry adviser, a writer, an inventor and an educator, but is perhaps best known for his work over the decades in the development and adoption of data collection, communication and RFID standards. He has chaired or served on dozens of industry, national and international standards committees.
