A history of barcodes – a revolution that took 20 years to happen
It’s a fascinating history that can be traced back to the original concept developed in the late 1940s, its official patent in the early 1950s, and finally its commercial take off more than 20 years later in the 1970s.
Technology has developed to such an extent that barcodes have become a daily part of our lives, forming the backbone of entire industries, yet we barely notice them. Who were the geniuses behind these useful tools that have made such a massive difference in society today? It’s a fascinating history that can be traced back to the original concept developed in the late 1940s, its official patent in the early 1950s, and finally its commercial take off more than 20 years later in the 1970s.
Where it all started
The history of barcodes is a bit like a fairy tale. It all began in the sand on a beach in Miami. Joe Woodland and Bob Silver were commissioned to tackle the biggest challenge that faced the retail industry at the time. Before 1974, every time a retail assistant sold a product, it was necessary for them to manually search for the item on their sales system, which back then probably was a big list written on paper. You can already get a sense of the inefficiency this would cause in both inventory management as well as at the point of sale.
The answer came to Joe Woodland as he was sitting on the beach in Miami. A wave of inspiration hit him and he drew his inspired design in the sand. He wanted a design that would be possible to be attached to products and scanned to be sold. In 1947, Joe Woodland and Bob Silver initiated a patent for a technological system to streamline the retail sales process. This patent was given to them in 1952 and this is when they began their work in earnest. It would take 20 years of development for the original barcode to fully enter our everyday lives.
First use of barcodes in a system
The very first use of a linear barcode was on railway carriages in the 1960s, before it even made its way onto the products that we see today. The KarTrak ACI System was developed by the Association of American Railroads. At the time, the KarTrak barcode scanner was the size of a fridge. The train’s approach would activate the barcode scanner, which would then use a sensor to interpret the scanned data. By 1975, 90% of railroad cars in America had these KarTrak labels. However, due to the high costs associated with maintaining these barcodes and the high cost of the computer equipment paired with the inaccuracy of the scanners at the time, three years later, by 1978, this system was abandoned.
In 1973, George Laurer took up where Woodland and Silver left off and refined their design to become the rectangular barcodes that we know today – a smaller version of the railroad system a decade before. His design would become known as the Universal Product Code (UPC) that is found throughout the world today.
First commercial use of barcodes
The UPC barcode was the first ever to be scanned in a supermarket. It was positioned on a 10 pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum in a small Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio in America. This event in June 1974 made history and put this small town on the map. Every year, they celebrate this milestone in history. For this first scanning of a barcode on a commercial product, they made sure that the barcode was printed on one of the smallest items in the store. This was to prove the usefulness and adaptability of barcodes.
The UPC barcode was eventually extended for international use outside of America to what is now known as the International Article Number, or the European Article Number (EAN) barcode. It is essentially the same as the UPC, except that it is an extra digit longer. The versatility that the EAN barcode now offers (being one digit longer) comes in the form of prefixes, which allows the user to identify certain characteristics of the owner, such as country of origin, manufacturing origin, etc.
The present and the future
Since it was first scanned, and over the past half-century of barcode development, UPC and EAN barcodes have become the backbone of the retail industry. With the efficiency that these barcodes have brought along with it, it could be argued that barcodes played a vital role in bringing about our modern economy, and paved the way for retailers to grow to unimaginable sizes.
The history of barcodes is long and extensive and barcoding technology is advancing every day. We are taking long strides forward into the future, with the more information-dense two-dimensional codes (such as QR codes) set to further revolutionise the world we live in today.
Barcode Solutions is excited to be part of this ongoing revolution. We supply a full range of registered barcodes, sourced directly from the international barcode database. Buying barcodes through our online store is quick and effortless and ideal for getting your products onto the shelves without going through additional registrations and renewal fees. We are more than happy to answer any barcode related questions you might have – we’ve heard them all!
