The Apple I computer was only six months old when the University of Waterloo library went digital. In its Feb. 15, 1977, issue, Quill & Quire reported that all books in the school’s system would “soon have labels with ‘bar codes’ similar to the ones used on supermarket products. Light-pens attached to a mini-computer will be used at the check-out desks.” Waterloo’s library inventory was fed into an online computer system at a rate of 83 books an hour per two-person team. The full job was expected to take 50,000 team hours, and be completed by that September. The “bar code” reading system was designed by Geac Computer Corporation, a company founded in Toronto in 1971 and acquired for $1 billion (U.S.) by Infor Global Solutions in March 2006.