The World Looks Back As The 50th Barcode Anniversary Unfolds
50 years ago, a town in Miami County, Ohio, became the place where the first barcode was scanned.
After a series of developments over the decades, “those funny little lines,” as they were called, are now a global tool that has revolutionized industries worldwide.
Since their inception, barcodes have made the lives of workers of all kinds a breeze. It first started in retail, where they were used to speed up the checkout process for both cashiers and shoppers.
Now, they’re being used to track inventory as it travels along the global supply chain.
To celebrate half a century of speedy checkouts and intuitive item tracking, let’s look back on the barcode’s journey over the years.
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Humble beginnings in the sand
The origins of barcodes can be traced back to a single conversation less than 30 years before the first barcode scan. Bernard Silver, a graduate student from Drexel Institute, overheard a supermarket executive asking the dean of engineering for a way to capture product information automatically at checkout.
Silver mentioned this problem to his fellow graduate student, Norman Joseph Woodland. After being convinced that it could be done, Woodland quit his teaching job and moved to Florida to get started.
One day along a beach on the Miami coast, Woodland recalled learning about Morse Code as a Boy Scout. He traced dots and dashes on the sand just as one would do when writing in Morse code.
He then drew his fingers downward to create a series of lines on the sand, thin lines from the dots and thick ones from the dashes. And thus, the concept of what would become the barcode was born.
At the time, the barcode wasn’t in the shape of a rectangle. Instead, Woodland and Silver came up with a circular “bullseye” barcode that could be read from any direction.
Despite filing the patent in 1949, it was only granted in 1952. Unfortunately, the technology at the time wasn’t enough to bring the duo’s creation to life.
All that would change when the Kroger Company and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) came across the Woodland and Silver patent more than a decade later.
After many attempts, the bullseye code was successfully tested in a Kroger store in Cincinnati. However, they realized that to revolutionize grocery shopping, the code had to be universal.
Despite many hurdles, an ad hoc committee dedicated to finding what would be known as the Universal Product Code settled on a submission from International Business Machines (IBM). This rectangular code, designed by George Laurer, would be chosen as the standard for barcodes in 1973.
The evolution from lines to squares
After its first commercial use on June 26, 1974, the barcode exploded in popularity across the world. With this new standard of automatically getting product information, buying and selling your products has become much more streamlined.
But their limitations became obvious as time went by. Despite its effectiveness, Universal Product Codes (UPC) barcodes could only hold 6 to 12 characters. While this could be enough for retail, barcodes began seeing use in manufacturing and in the global supply chain as ways to track items.
Due to its limited size, multiple barcodes had to be placed on items just to get access to all relevant information.
Another limitation was the inability to scan QR codes in more than one direction. This was especially difficult when they would be placed on items of different shapes and sizes.
These came to a head in 1994 when Denso Wave, an automotive products company, invented the QR code. A type of 2D barcode, it featured an increased storage capacity and the ability to be scanned from any direction.
In a genius move, the company shared the QR code’s specifications for free despite patenting them. This allowed the QR code to grow in popularity and led to discussions about using 1D vs 2D barcodes over the years.
Looking towards a new horizon with Sunrise 2027
TODAY, the use of 1D barcodes and QR codes has expanded beyond product identification and retail. From healthcare to marketing campaigns, both kinds of barcodes are scanned billions of times a day!
Thanks to Denso Wave making QR codes free for the public to use, even the average person can make and scan QR codes. Several companies have also taken it upon themselves to make platforms like a QR code generator with logo or QR code scanning apps.
With technology like that, QR codes can be generated for a variety of applications. A popular way of using QR codes for personal use is through initiating cashless payments when making purchases.
This method of using 2D barcodes has been seeing significant usage, particularly in Asia, thanks to its ease and convenience.
The benefits of QR codes across all industries are beginning to transition from using 1-dimensional barcodes to QR codes. This bold effort is led by GS1 with the goal of implementing 2D barcode technology into existing point-of-sale systems.
Known as Sunrise 2027, this transition will see QR codes, specifically those powered by GS1’s Digital Link Standard, being scanned at checkout alongside 1D barcodes. In time, this is expected to lead to the phasing out of UPC barcodes in retail.
The barcode technology, indeed, has come a long way from its initial drawing on the beaches of Miami, Florida.
The shift to a new system is only the next step in further developments, but the world is eager to take it — and the 50-year record is enough proof.
