History of Barcode Technology

May. 06, 2024

History of Barcode Technology

The barcode: it’s as almost as ubiquitous as air these days, on just about every inanimate object on this planet (and some animate ones, too!); anything that needs to be accounted for in the supply chain or run through a checkout line has one. They’re so ingrained in our way of doing things that most people don’t remember a time when we didn’t use barcodes to track products and inventory. This innovation revolutionized the supply chain, so we’re giving it a li’l love with this blog, celebrating it by looking at some important barcode milestones.

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A Barcode Technology Timeline

You don’t have to be a #SupplyChainGeek to find the history of the barcode interesting. It’s a story filled with triumphs, failures, surprises, human drama, and, finally, a remarkable innovation that changed the world.

The inventor of the barcode was Joe Woodland, who was inspired by the dots and dashes of Morse code to come up with a similar approach to simplifying inventory (stocktaking) and get shoppers through the checkout lines more quickly.

The birthplace, so to speak, of the barcode as we know it is in the unassuming city of Troy, Ohio, at a small-town grocery called Marsh Supermarket. It’s here that the very first product labeled with a Universal Product Code, or UPC, was scanned at a checkout; the product was a pack of chewing gum. But that’s where the invention was first put into use...so much happened prior to that day. Here are a few highlights.

1949.

Woodland was given a problem he wanted to solve: make the customer experience at the grocery store simpler and faster. His solution was to have every product coded in a way that would eliminate the manual work of pricing (and eliminate the need to look up prices when a price tag was missing). It was a simple concept that evolved into something far more sophisticated and far-reaching in its uses and benefits.

Woodland, together with a man named Bernard Silver, filed a patent for their solution: a barcode that contained product price and other information (though in its original form, it was a series of concentric circles); it was granted in 1952. The two men built something to demonstrate the UPC concept and the associated scanning device, but photographs of this initial equipment cease to exist. It’s said to have used, among other things, a 500-watt light bulb and an oscilloscope to read the code. Though the idea was solid, it was too early for actual implementation, as there was no computer to make it all work.

1960.

In this year, the world was introduced to the laser (or Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), an invention that gave Woodland and Silver’s UPC application a shot in the arm. What they needed to make barcoding a reality was a substantially more powerful light, and lasers gave them exactly that.

Lasers are tiny beams of light so sharp that they’re used to cut through granite...so how could they possibly be applied to the challenge Woodland was trying to solve? The world to which this new innovation was introduced saw potential for its application in medicine/surgery, defense, science, industry, communications—but not the grocery industry.

1972.

Through the industry grapevine, a research team looking for a project heard about the barcode and attempted to develop some practical use cases. They found Woodland and Silver’s patent for the barcode and scanner. After some initial missteps, the first automated checkstands featuring a barcode scanner were installed on July 3, 1972. The speed through which customers were able to pass through this new checkout method was a significant improvement over the traditional process; now the challenge was to sell the rest of the industry on this newfangled invention.

A committee was formed to find a way to introduce a single UPC concept that would be common to all products sold in supermarkets and imprinted by the manufacturers and retailers. The information represented by the barcode would be product type, manufacturer, date produced and other data. Computers at the checkout would read this information and enable tracking of sales and other metrics.

Several companies vied for the opportunity to make the first systems in the country, and the winner was International Business Machines (IBM), Joe Woodland’s employer. (Woodland was not the creator of its version of the Universal Bar Code, however—a man named George Lauer has that honor.)

Some of the criteria for selection were that the code had to be no more than 1.5 square inches, printable with existing technology used for standard labels, consist of only 10 digits, be readable from any direction at any speed—and must demonstrate fewer than one in 20,000 undetected errors in its use. Laurer created a rectangular code that satisfied all these requirements.

1973.

On March 30, 1973, independent scientists from MIT selected the winning UPC that would be featured on all products sold in supermarkets: Lauer’s barcode.

1974.

Back to Troy, Ohio. The first product scanned—a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum—was chosen for its size. Some people doubted that small packages could be effectively imprinted and scanned with a barcode, so Wrigley’s wanted to prove them wrong, and did.

Interestingly, it took until the 1980s for the bar code to really take off, with Kmart and Walmart being two of the first adopters, both of which pushed for its adoption because of the tremendous benefits to their cataloguing and tracking.

Continued Innovation

A few additional dates related to the barcode: In 1982 the first charge coupled device (CDD) scanner was introduced, a precursor to today’s scanning devices; in 1986 the first handheld fixed-beam laser scanner was patented; in 2005 airlines began printing barcodes on boarding passes; and in 2008 cell phones had the technology to be able to display barcodes.

So there you have it: a nutshell version of the history of barcodes. If you’re not convinced that this was a remarkable advancement—and a global one—consider that in 1992 President George H. W. Bush awarded Woodland the National Medal of Technology & Innovation for his contribution to technology.

In an upcoming blog post we’ll talk about some of the most common (and some not-so-common) ways barcodes are used and the benefits derived from them. Stay tuned—you might learn something new!

As always, we’re eager to help companies large and small utilize barcodes to make their operations more efficient. Reach out to us—we’d love to have a conversation! And, if you’re already using barcodes but want to know where opportunities for improvement are, request a labeling assessment—just click the link below!

The Fascinating History of Barcode Scanners - Scanco

The Fascinating History of Barcode Scanners

Have you ever looked up the history of barcodes and barcode scanners? It’s a story filled with school drop outs, tough competition, a few false starts, and a stunning success at the end. In fact, it’s got all the makings of a tense tech thriller just like the Steve Jobs story—and yet very few people have heard how barcodes were invented.

We assure you, it’s worth a read.

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Contact us to discuss your requirements of Inventory Scanners Handheld. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.

Not into history lessons? Plan for your business future by leveraging barcodes at your manufacturing or distribution company. Contact Scanco online or at (330) 645-9959 for your free consultation.

Barcode Scanners: The Beginning

Before the barcode, there were different, inefficient methods of trying to track things. The most common practice was to shut your store down entirely and count every piece of merchandise by hand. This resulted in lost revenues due to downtime, plus labor overtime.

One day in 1948, Bernard Silver, a grad student at Drexel Institute of Technology, overheard a conversation between the owner of a local chain grocery store and the college’s dean. The grocery store owner was pleading with the dean to fund research into a solution that would track inventory. The dean denied the grocery store owner’s request, but Bernard, an enterprising young man, decided to follow up. He went to go see his good friend Norman Joseph Woodland.

Woodland, also a student (and a teacher) at Drexel, was fascinated and the two students came up with a few solutions that could work. One such solution was ultraviolet ink, which lit up under ultraviolet light. This solution seemed promising at the outset, but the ink had a troublesome habit of fading, so it couldn’t handle aging inventory.

Obsessed with finding a solution, Woodland decided to drop out of school, so he could better focus on his research.

After dropping out of school, Woodland spent his time on the beach (who wouldn’t?). He would sit for long hours in the sun, thinking of ways to track inventory. (Apparently, he wasn’t too into the idea of dating.) At one point, he dragged his fingers through the sand … and suddenly the solution came to him: he could make wide and narrow lines, which would be a lot like the dots and dashes of Morse code. Eureka!

Honestly, we can’t make this stuff up, people.

Early Barcoding: The “Bulls-Eye Code” and Beyond

When Woodland drew his fingers across the sand, he actually drew the lines in a circle pattern. He called this early barcoding system the “Bulls-Eye Code” and he chose to use a circle so that the pattern could be scanned in any direction. (This would be handy, had we kept this.)

Since lasers didn’t exist in 1949 when he developed the barcode, Woodland also developed a ridiculously complex, light-based system for scanning the codes. (We could explain this, but it would bore you to tears. Suffice to say, it was kind of like a light box and a movie projector put together. In other words: it was unusable.) This impossible scanning system pretty much stopped the barcode in its tracks and, though Woodland maintained his interest after he later started working for IBM, no one but him had any interest in further developing the barcode. It wasn’t until later, when computers developed further, that the barcode would return.

In essence, Woodland and Silver were waaay ahead of their time.

A Developing Timeline for Barcode Solutions

By 1962, technology still hadn’t caught up with the possibilities of barcoding, but the idea was starting to catch on. That’s when Woodland and Silver sold the patent to Philco for a whopping $15,000. Only one year after that, Silver died at the age of 38. Later, Philco sold the patent to RCA.

Interest in barcode technology was growing—and one of the most interested industries was railroads. Then, as now, railcars would travel all over the country and they were also loaned out for use by other lines. As early as the 1960s, the railroads knew that with barcoding technology, they’d be able to better and more efficiently track their freight cars. Though the railroads came up with a workable barcoding solution, no one thought to tell the grocery stores.

While barcodes were a great invention, they were still a niche product.

A Blast Forward for Barcodes: The Invention of the Barcode Scanner

In the early 70s, Computer Identics developed the barcode scanning technology that would change the world. It was based on lasers, which solved the problem of the impossible-to-use technology that Woodland invented … but lasers weren’t much better. The public feared them, and they weren’t doing well on the market.

Until, suddenly, the dots connected.

At a grocery tradeshow in 1971, RCA displayed an “ID scanning” tool gimmick; customers who successfully scanned an RCA tin with the ID scanner would win a prize. IBM happened to also be in attendance at the tradeshow and saw the tool’s popularity. After the tradeshow, IBM began to follow up on the growing interest in barcode technology—and they intelligently transferred Woodland, so he could lead the barcode development team.

The 1970s and 1980s: The Barcode Scanning Race Is On

Then, a lot of things happened in quick succession.

1972: RCA works with Kroger grocery stores on an 18-month test of the Bulls-Eye Code. The test shows that the printing process can sometimes smear the barcodes, which makes the codes unreadable.
1972-1973: Woodland and his IBM team are working on a series of black bars that, even if the ink smears, would still show the same code. This is called the UPC (Universal Product Code), and it’s the system we all know and love today. (Well, we love barcodes, and once you start using them, you’ll love them too.) The National Association of Food Chains accepted the UPC as the industry standard on April 3, 1973.
1974: A packet of Wrigley’s gum is the first product scanned with a GS1 barcode. It’s scanned in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
1977: 200 stores use barcode scanner technology. Most companies weren’t buying in because barcodes were really, really expensive, but the stores that had implemented the technology had such overwhelming success that other companies were almost forced into making the change. Barcode scanners, alone, had a reported ROI of 41.5%. (Even now, barcodes are still incredibly time-saving and have an incredible ROI, by the way.)
1980: Over 8,000 stores per year were converting to barcode technology because of its proven success.
1989: Scanco is formed and now, nearly 30 years later, we’re still helping manufacturers and distributors use barcodes and barcode scanners to increase their efficiency and streamline their operations.

What an exciting run it’s been!

Barcode Scanners: Still a Stunning Success Today

In our nearly 30 years of experience spent solving manufacturing and distribution challenges using barcodes, barcode scanners, and newly developed scanning technologies such as NFC and RFID, Scanco is proud to say we’ve helped thousands of world-class companies work smarter and faster.

In 1948, when Norman Joseph Woodland pioneered the idea of barcodes, he probably didn’t fully understand how much the technology would change the world but, for many companies, doing business today without barcode scanners is almost impossible to imagine.

What could you accomplish with better, faster barcode scanners?

Contact Scanco online or at (330) 645-9959 to get information and advice about the next generation of affordable barcode scanner options for Sage, NetSuite, and Acumatica ERP.

For more information, please visit Barcode Scanner for Resellers.