What Was the First Product to Have a Barcode

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

A Barcode Technology Timeline

You lot 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 being 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 up with a like 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 information technology is in the unassuming city of Troy, Ohio, at a small-boondocks grocery called Marsh Supermarket. Information technology'due south hither that the very commencement 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 utilise...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 shop simpler and faster. His solution was to accept every production coded in a fashion that would eliminate the transmission work of pricing (and eliminate the demand to look upwards prices when a toll 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 Argent, filed a patent for their solution: a barcode that contained product cost and other information (though in its original form, it was a serial of concentric circles); it was granted in 1952. The two men congenital something to demonstrate the UPC concept and the associated scanning device, but photographs of this initial equipment terminate to exist. It's said to have used, among other things, a 500-watt calorie-free seedling and an oscilloscope to read the code. Though the idea was solid, it was too early for actual implementation, as there was no reckoner to make it all work.

1960.

In this twelvemonth, the world was introduced to the laser (or Low-cal Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiations), 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 than powerful light, and lasers gave them exactly that.

Lasers are tiny beams of light then sharp that they're used to cut through granite...so how could they possibly exist applied to the claiming 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—just non the grocery industry.

1972.

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

A commission was formed to observe a way to introduce a single UPC concept that would be mutual to all products sold in supermarkets and imprinted by the manufacturers and retailers. The data represented by the barcode would exist 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 brand the starting time systems in the state, and the winner was International Business Machines (IBM), Joe Woodland's employer. (Woodland was non the creator of its version of the Universal Bar Code, however—a man named George Lauer has that accolade.)

Some of the criteria for selection were that the code had to be no more than than 1.5 foursquare inches, printable with existing applied science used for standard labels, consist of only 10 digits, exist readable from any direction at whatsoever speed—and must demonstrate fewer than one in xx,000 undetected errors in its use. Laurer created a rectangular lawmaking 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.

Dorsum to Troy, Ohio. The kickoff product scanned—a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum—was called for its size. Some people doubted that small packages could be finer imprinted and scanned with a barcode, so Wrigley'southward wanted to testify them wrong, and did.

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

Connected Innovation

A few additional dates related to the barcode: In 1982 the first charge coupled device (CDD) scanner was introduced, a precursor to today'south scanning devices; in 1986 the first handheld fixed-beam light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation scanner was patented; in 2005 airlines began printing barcodes on boarding passes; and in 2008 prison cell phones had the technology to exist able to brandish barcodes.

So there yous have it: a nutshell version of the history of barcodes. If you're not convinced that this was a remarkable advocacy—and a global i—consider that in 1992 President George H. West. Bush awarded Woodland the National Medal of Applied science & Innovation for his contribution to technology.

In an upcoming blog postal service nosotros'll talk almost some of the most common (and some not-then-common) ways barcodes are used and the benefits derived from them. Stay tuned—you might learn something new!

Equally always, we're eager to help companies big and small employ barcodes to make their operations more than efficient. Reach out to us—we'd dearest to have a conversation! And, if you lot're already using barcodes just want to know where opportunities for comeback are, request a labeling assessment—merely click the link below!

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Source: https://www.barcoding.com/blog/barcode-history

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