History of the Barcode - Who invented the barcode?

Although barcodes appear very common around us, all brands have barcodes, but do we really know about the birth of barcodes? What is its use? Who invented it? And when was it first used?

History of the barcode

While it may appear like barcodes have been around for a long time, they didn't take off until the 1970s. 

In 1948, the owner of a local food chain approached the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia to inquire about research into a system of automatically scanning product information during checkout. 

Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute, collaborated with fellow graduate student Norman Joseph Woodland to create a solution.

Woodland was the first to suggest employing UV light-sensitive ink. 

A workable prototype was developed, but it was rejected because it was too unstable and expensive.

After that, Woodland and Silver succeeded in developing a functional prototype on October 20, 1949, defining their discovery as "item classification... using the method of recognizing patterns." 

Silver and Woodland created the first bar code.

On October 7, 1952, they were given a patent (US Patent #2,612,994) for their "Classifying Apparatus and Method".

Efforts to create a functional system accelerated in the 1960s.

When were bar codes first used?

Barcoding was first utilized commercially in 1966, but for the system to be accepted by the industry as a whole, some type of industry standard was required. 

Logicon Inc. created the Universal Grocery Products Identification Code in 1970. 

The American company Monarch Marking (1970) was the first to create barcode equipment for retail commerce (using UGPIC).

Also, the British company Plessey Telecommunications (1970) was the first to produce barcode equipment for industrial use (1970).

Wonder when did bar codes start? - The first barcode scanned was at a Kroger supermarket in Cincinnati in 1972. 

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