At 8:01 a.m. on June 26 of that year, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum slid past an optical scanner. The scanner beeped, and the cash register understood, faithfully ringing up 67 cents.

That purchase, at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, was the first anywhere to be rung up using a bar code.

The widespread use of bar codes, industry experts say, is partly because of the work of one person, a supermarket executive from Massachusetts named Alan L. Haberman, who died Sunday at 81.

Haberman did not invent the universal product code, or UPC, as the most prevalent type of bar code is formally known. But it is to him that its sheer black-and-white ubiquity and familiar graphic form are primarily owed.

His death, in Newton, Mass., was of complications of heart and lung disease, his family said.

Haberman led the industry committee that chose the bar code over other contenders — circles, bull’s-eyes and seemingly random agglomerations of dots — in 1973. He spent years afterward cajoling manufacturers, retailers and the public to accept the strange new symbol. His efforts helped cement the marriage between commerce and information technology.