 The CODEN, designed by Charles Bishop (of the Chronic Disease Research Institute at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, retired), was initially thought as a memory aid for the publications in his reference collection.Bishop took initial letters of words from periodical titles thereby using a code, which helped him arranging the collected publications.In 1953 he published his documentation system, originally designed as a four letter CODEN system; volume and page numbers have been added, in order to cite and locate exactly an article in a magazine.