When: 1973
Where: USA
Why: The automation of the retail process saw a transformation of shopping
How: Inventors wanted to devise a system whereby product information could be automatically read during check-out
Who: Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver
Fact: The very first item scanned by the standardised system in 1974 was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum
Today, barcodes are so commonplace that it’s almost impossible to imagine the retail environment without them. We don’t give a second thought to shop assistants scanning a can of soup, a new pair of shoes or a bunch of bananas; we even do it ourselves on self-service check-outs, or buy iPhone apps with barcode scanning capabilities. But to get to this point, the concept has gone through many different guises and incarnations.
It took three decades to turn a theory into a fully functional reality – and much, much longer for it to become the retail cornerstone that it is today.
Before the barcode, shopping for items required the cashier to manually enter in the price of each item, a slow and tedious process with enormous capacity for error. It also meant that record-keeping and writing of receipts had to be performed manually, so keeping track of stock was a painstaking task. The industry was crying out for change.
Back in 1932, a bunch of Harvard students offered early hope by creating a system of punch cards. However, it wasn’t until the late 1940s that Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, overheard the boss of a local food chain asking one of the deans if it would be possible to research a system that could automatically read product information during the check-out process. Excited by the prospect of creating a game-changing technology, Silver repeated the conversation to his friend Norman Joseph Woodland, a 27-year-old graduate and teacher at Drexel. They began work immediately, and the long process that led to the creation of the barcode was under way.
The duo certainly came up with a few red herrings. Their first working prototype, based on light-sensitive ultraviolet ink, was soon found to be both expensive and ineffective, because the ink faded too quickly. So they went back to the drawing board; Woodland quit his post at Drexel and moved into his grandfather’s apartment in Florida, where he continued beavering away. The next version was inspired by Morse code: ‘I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow lines and wide lines out of them’, he reportedly said.
But creating the machines to read the data wasn’t so simple. Eventually, Woodland decided to adapt the movie sound system technology dreamt up by Lee de Forest in the 1920s. Convinced he’d hit the jackpot this time, Woodland headed back to Drexel. He decided to replace his wide and narrow lines with concentric circles, so that they could be scanned from any direction; this became known as the bull’s-eye code.
Shortly after, on 20 October 1949, the two filed for the ‘Classifying Apparatus and Method’ patent. The inventors described their creation as ‘article classification … through the medium of identifying patterns’ – referring to the iconic barcode pattern of vertical lines that we all know so well these days.
While the patent was pending (it wasn’t granted until 7 October 1952), Woodland took a job at IBM, where he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade his bosses that IBM should get involved in the development of his invention. Finally running out of steam, the two inventors sold their patent to Philco, a pioneer in early battery, radio and television production in 1952; Philco then sold it on to RCA (the Radio Corporation of America) in the same year.
Meanwhile, David Collins was developing an invention of his own. As a student, he had worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he noticed the complexity of keeping track of train cars. After some investigation, it became apparent that some sort of coded label would be the easiest and cheapest way of solving the problem.
The labels Collins eventually came up with were not what we now think of as barcodes: rather than being formed of black lines or rings, they used groups of orange and blue stripes made of reflective material. But Collins did have the foresight to figure out that there were many applications for automatic coding beyond the railroads.
He pitched the idea to his current employer, Sylvania, but short-sighted bosses rejected his proposal because of a lack of funding. So Collins promptly quit and set up his own company, Computer Indentics. In 1969, Computer Indentics quietly installed its first two barcode systems – one at a car plant and another at a distribution facility.
But it was the grocery industry that had most to gain from the adoption of barcodes. At an industry event in 1971, RCA, which had been pouring ever-increasing resources into the project, demonstrated a functional bull’s-eye code system. Having got wind of the idea’s considerable popularity (and worried that it could be missing out on a huge market), IBM somewhat belatedly decided that it wanted a piece of the action.
The adoption of the Universal Product Code, on 3 April 1973, transformed barcodes from a technological curiosity into an idea that would change the retail business for good.
Handily, Woodland, the barcode’s original inventor, was still on IBM’s staff. His patent had expired, but he was transferred to IBM’s facilities in North Carolina, where he played a prominent role in developing the most important version of the technology: the Universal Product Code (UPC). It soon became apparent that an industry standard was needed (multiple versions of the barcode would be worse than useless), and while RCA continued to push its bull’s-eye version, the technically elegant IBM-born UPC was the one ultimately chosen by the industry. The adoption of the UPC, on 3 April 1973, transformed barcodes from a technological curiosity into an idea that would change the retail business for good.
By June 1974, all the groundwork was in place – the testing carried out, proposals completed and standards set – and a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum became the first retail product sold with the help of a barcode scanner. Today, the pack of gum is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
After decades of development and billions of dollars in investment, barcodes and the accompanying scanners had now become a practical reality. That’s not to say that they were wholeheartedly embraced by the retail community; on the contrary, the use of scanners grew slowly at first. The system would only start paying off when around 85% of all products carried the codes. But when this target was met, in the late 1970s, take-up rates rocketed.
It’s little wonder that it caught on, because the benefits of barcodes are plentiful. The first advantage for retailers is speed: a barcode can be scanned in less time than it takes for a keyboard operator to make a single keystroke, and mistakes are much less common. It’s cost-effective, too: research conducted by consultancy McKinsey back in 1970 predicted that the industry would save $150m a year by adopting the systems. And it also gives retailers much more accurate data about their customers – without exposing themselves to lost business and higher operating risk. So there’s no doubt that barcode technology was a big step forward for the retail industry.
A barcode can be scanned in less time than it takes for a keyboard operator to make a single keystroke.
An ABI Research report in early 2011 estimated that the market for barcode scanners, which includes both fixed and handheld devices, was worth $1.4bn in 2010. It anticipated that 2011 would see growth stall somewhat, amid financial turmoil and a slump in the retail sector, with revenues increasing by just $0.1bn during the year for leading providers of devices such as Motorola, Psion Teklogix, Nordic ID, AWID, Intermec, and Convergence Systems Limited.
It is expected that manufacturers will drive additional revenue from the increasing prominence of 2D versions of the traditional barcode – ones that consist of not just straight lines, like the original version, but of squares, dots, and other geometric patterns.
Barcodes such as the UPC have become a ubiquitous component of modern-day life. And not just in the retail business; the technology has been slowly creeping into other areas of life in a way that Woodland and Silver could never have imagined. Scientists have even put miniature barcodes on bees to track their mating habits, while the codes also appear on concert tickets, hospital ID bracelets, business documents and even marathon runners’ bibs.
Another evolution of the classic barcode is the RFID (Radio Frequency Identifier) tag, which is also increasingly common; they’re stuck to the covers of books and CDs to prevent them from being stolen, and are used extensively in warehouses and other areas of the supply chain to keep track of stock. Some countries even employ RFID to identify lost pets.
Scientists have even put miniature barcodes on bees to track their mating habits.
The appearance of barcodes has evolved, too. The UPC version remains the most dominant and recognisable – but like many technologies, it’s in danger of being overtaken by newer, more advanced versions. The new 2D versions, for example, are being used on airline boarding passes throughout the world, supplanting the traditional magnetic design. Unlike magnetic strips, 2D barcodes can be printed on any kind of paper, or can even be scanned directly from a passenger’s mobile phone. This not only saves time for passengers, but also money for airlines because they need fewer check-in staff – an all-round win-win.
One particular form of the 2D code that has captured the attention of the public, technology companies and marketing agencies alike is QR (Quick Response). Created by Toyota in 1994, QR was originally used to track vehicle parts. But it has since found more glamorous uses, having been seen on the cover of a Pet Shop Boys’ single and in PlayStation 3 games.
And what became of the founders? Sadly, Silver died in 1963 before the value of his invention had been truly realised. As for Woodland, having sold the patent, it’s unlikely that he ever became rich from his invention – although he can take some solace in the fact that he was awarded the 1992 National Medal of Technology by President Bush. He is thought to be now retired, safe in the knowledge that, as a result of his work, neither retail nor logistics will ever be the same again.