Romano Volta (born 15 February 1937) is an Italian businessman who is the executive chairman and founder of Datalogic, an Italian company manufacturing barcode readers, mobile computers, radio-frequency identification, sensors for detection, and other electronic equipment. Early life Born in Bologna, Romano Volta graduated with a degree in electronic engineering cum laude from the University of Bologna. In the early 1970s, after a period as a professor at the Aldini Valeriani Technical Institute, Volta was a junior assistant to professor Giuseppe Evangelisti at the University of Bologna, at the heart of what is known as the "Packaging Valley", where most of the Italian companies that produce packaging machines are based. Professor Evangelisti was asked by some entrepreneurs to develop electronic optical devices to automate specific verification processes such as the centering of brands on packaging, the positioning of print, or the presence of a tablet in a blister pack. Volta was put in charge of this task and began to develop a new device called a "color mark reader" to detect slight differences in contrast on packaging material; this device is still installed today in all packaging machines. His ability to combine optics with electronics, providing check processing and verification equipment electronically integrated into the machine in a unique solution, quickly made Volta well known in the sector. He then founded a company called "Datalogic Optic Electronics". Some years later, with the introduction of bar code systems, Volta began the development of the optical devices that became known as barcode readers. Datalogic Optic Electronics Having started the development of barcode readers, Volta left his position at the University of Bologna to focus on his business initiative. He transferred from a small laboratory to a factory based in Lippo di Calderara, near the Bologna airport. In 1972, Datalogic was officially founded. In 1974, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum was the first retail product sold using a counter-top barcode scanner, the Magellan Model-A (now exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.) by PSC, a company later acquired by Datalogic. In the 1980s, Datalogic established itself as one of the major European companies for industrial applications, manufacturing the first industrial scanner in 1978. Datalogic also pioneered the design of baggage handling systems for airports, installing the first scanner at Milan's Linate Airport in 1984. Today, Datalogic is an international company, quoted on the FTSE