50 years ago on this day (June 26th, 1974), the first barcode was scanned at Troy’s Marsh Supermarket in Miami County, Ohio. The shopper (Clyde Dawson) chose a multi-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum as the first product to scan at checkout. At the time, there was a lot of skepticism about whether a barcode on such a small product would work...but it did! History was made.

Who created the barcode & why?

The mastermind behind the revolutionary barcode was Norman Joseph Woodland, a Mechanical Engineer who once worked on the Manhattan Project (the project responsible for creating the US military's first atomic bomb!).

In 1948, after his time working on explosives, Woodland went to Graduate school. During this time, he overheard a grocery executive pleading with the Dean of Research to ask students for help coming up with a way to capture product information at checkout. This piqued Woodland's interest and he spent months thinking about a solution. Growing up, Woodland was a Scout and had learned Morse Code. While sitting on the beach aimlessly drawing in the sand one day, he had an idea to connect the dots and dashes of Morse Code into parallel lines. This sketch in the sand became the very first draft of the barcode.

There were many iterations of the barcode with different shapes and symbols, but ultimately, the original barcode with parallel lines was the final design that received a patent in 1952.

In the years following, Woodland worked with a research team at IBM to develop a barcode reading laser that could scan barcodes. After years of research and development, on April 3rd, 1973 IBM’s Universal Product Code (UPC) was selected by industry leaders to become the standard way of reading product information at points of sale.

Barcodes today

Originally created to capture product information at points of sale, the barcode is now scanned over 10 billion times a day and is used to keep track of more than just products. We use barcodes in hospital bracelets to keep track of newborns, in shipping containers to simplify supply chains, and even in marathons to record race data.

Sources:

• https://www.labelcentre.co.uk/the-barcode-turns-50/
• https://theguardian.com/technology/2012/dec/16/n-joseph-woodland