In 2026, it is difficult to imagine a world without barcodes. According to estimates from 2012, over 5 billion products are scanned every day around the world, and that number has certainly grown over the past decade. They are ubiquitous: from packs of chewing gum in the supermarket, through courier parcels, to identification wristbands in hospitals and Mars rovers exploring the surface of the Red Planet. The barcode has become one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, generating trillions of dollars in value for the global economy and forever changing the way we trade, produce and manage information.
The history of this invention, however, goes back much further than one might think. Its origins are inextricably linked to the history of American retail, which in the mid-20th century was struggling with a serious problem. In supermarkets, workers had to manually enter the price of each product, which was not only time-consuming but also generated enormous costs and led to numerous errors. A system was needed that would automate this process, speed up customer service and facilitate inventory management. At the time, however, the technology needed to meet this challenge did not exist. Laser scanners did not exist, and computers were large, expensive machines available only to a select few. Nevertheless, two young engineers took on this challenge, unaware that their work would forever change the face of global commerce.
It all began in 1948 at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, where two graduates of the institution, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, took on a challenge posed by a local supermarket chain. The store owner approached one of the lecturers with a request to develop a method for automatically reading product information, and he passed the task on to his students. Silver, who heard about the problem, shared it with his colleague Woodland, and they both decided to take on this ambitious task, even though at the time the laser technology needed to read the codes did not yet exist. Woodland, who had previously worked as a technical assistant on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, already had experience working on complex technical systems.
Initially, Woodland and Silver considered using fluorescent ink that would glow under ultraviolet light, but this idea proved impractical due to the instability of the ink and the high cost of printing. Woodland, however, had another brilliant idea. As he recalled, it came to him while relaxing on a beach in Miami. Sitting in a chair, he ran his fingers through the sand, thinking about Morse code, which consists of dots and dashes. It suddenly occurred to him that lines of different widths could represent data in a similar way to the dashes and dots in Morse code.
– I stuck my four fingers in the sand and for some reason I pulled them towards me, drawing four lines – Woodland recalled in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine.
– I said, 'Gee! I have four lines and they can be wide and narrow, instead of dots and dashes.’- he said.
On October 20, 1949, Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for a „Classifying Apparatus and Method.” On October 7, 1952, they received US patent number 2,612,994 for their invention. Their invention, known as the „bull’s eye” code, did not resemble modern barcodes. It consisted of concentric circles that were intended to allow the code to be read from any direction. Woodland believed that the circular shape would be more practical than straight lines, because the scanner would not have to be precisely positioned.
Although this may seem like a strange complication today, at the time the circle seemed like a better solution. The patent was later sold for $15,000 to the electronics company Philco in 1961, which failed to commercialise it. Unfortunately, Silver died on August 28, 1963, at the age of 38 from leukaemia, without witnessing the revolution brought about by his invention.
The road to commercialisation. IBM, George Laurer and the birth of UPC
Although the patent had been granted, the laser technology needed to read the codes did not exist for another two decades. Woodland joined IBM in 1951 and worked on developing his invention for 35 years, but for a long time it did not yield tangible results. It was not until the 1960s, when laser technology began to develop, that the food industry again became interested in automatic product identification.
In 1966, the National Association of Food Chains recommended the introduction of automated checkout systems, which sparked a search for a universal product code that could be used across the industry. Meanwhile, other companies were working on competing solutions. The KarTrak system, developed by Sylvania Electric Products and launched in 1967, was designed to help identify and track freight in trains, using coloured barcodes that could be scanned while moving. It was one of the first commercial applications of barcodes.
In 1969, IBM, recognising the huge market potential, began intensive work on the barcode. A key role was played by George Laurer, an IBM engineer who was tasked with designing a practical and efficient system. Laurer initially analysed Woodland’s „bull’s eye” code, but quickly concluded that this approach would never work in practice.
As he later wrote: „It was obvious to me that such an approach would never meet all the requirements in the long run.” Instead, Laurer proposed a linear arrangement of bars, which was simpler to print and read. His innovative idea was to add an X character in the scanning window, which allowed the code to be read regardless of its orientation. „With a simple X character, linear bars could be read regardless of their orientation in the scanning window,” Laurer explained.
On April 3, 1973, leaders of the food industry in the United States chose a single standard for product identification, which had been developed by George Laurer at IBM. This standard, known as the Universal Product Code (UPC), became the basis for all subsequent coding systems around the world. In 1976, the European Article Numbering System (EAN) was created, extending the UPC standard to 13 digits by adding a country-of-origin prefix, enabling global product identification. Today, the GS1 system, derived from the original UPC code, is used in over 150 countries and covers millions of products worldwide.
The day the first pack of chewing gum was scanned
The date June 26, 1974, was forever etched in the history of retail. At 8:01 a.m. that day at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, cashier Sharon Buchanan scanned a product marked with a UPC code for the first time. The historic product was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum, which cost 67 cents (the standard price of 69 cents had been reduced as part of a promotion). The scanner, manufactured by Spectra-Physics (now Datalogic), read the barcode, and the price automatically appeared on the cash register screen. This event ushered in a new era in retail, where shopping became faster, more accurate and more efficient.
The first scanners, however, were huge and expensive. The device weighed 112 pounds (about 51 kilograms) and was 32 inches tall. The cost of the entire scanning system for a single store was over $100,000 (about $600,000 in today’s money), and the scanner itself cost around $6,000-$7,000. Moreover, many people feared that barcodes would be used for surveillance or would cause job losses. Despite these concerns, the Marsh supermarket quickly recognised the benefits of the new technology. The system proved extremely effective. It reduced customer service time, eliminated pricing errors and enabled better inventory management. Within a few years, other retail chains began introducing barcodes, and the technology became standard across the United States.
The evolution of technology. From simple stripes to two-dimensional QR codes
The success of the UPC code sparked the dynamic development of a whole family of barcodes, which were adapted to different needs and applications. In 1974, the same year as the first UPC scan, Intermec developed Code 39, which was the first to enable the encoding of alphabetic characters, not just digits. In 1981, Ted Williams of Computer Identics created Code 128, which offered the highest data density of any linear barcode of the time. In 1982, Intermec introduced Code 93 as a more compact alternative to Code 39. In the same year, the US Postal Service implemented the POSTNET system for automatic mail sorting, processing billions of items.
The real revolution, however, came with the introduction of two-dimensional codes, which can store much larger amounts of data than traditional linear barcodes. In 1987, Data Matrix was developed, the first two-dimensional matrix code, which opened the era of high-density encoding. In 1991, Symbol Technologies created PDF417, a stacked code capable of encoding up to 1,850 alphanumeric characters, which was later adopted as the standard for driving licences worldwide. In 1992, UPS developed MaxiCode, designed for fast parcel sorting, featuring a distinctive bulls-eye targeting pattern. In 1995, Welch Allyn introduced the Aztec code, which does not require a quiet zone around the code and is widely used in airline and transport tickets.
The best-known two-dimensional code, however, is the QR code, which was developed in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave for tracking parts in car manufacturing. The QR code gained huge popularity in the last decade thanks to the widespread availability of smartphones, which can easily read it. In 2026, QR codes are used everywhere – from restaurants, through advertising, to mobile payment systems. The introduction of the GS1 Digital Link standard in 2024 enabled the encoding of internet addresses in QR codes, opening up new possibilities for marketing and sales.
Trillions of dollars in value. How the barcode changed the world
The impact of the barcode on the global economy is difficult to overstate. According to estimates, the introduction of the UPC system into retail in the United States alone generated savings of $300 billion over the first 30 years of its use. Barcodes enabled the automation of processes that previously required huge amounts of human labour.
They made it possible to carry out accurate real-time inventories, track shipments around the world and manage complex supply chains. Barcodes have found applications not only in retail but also in logistics (for tracking parcels), in libraries (for identifying books), in industry (for managing production), in ticketing systems (e.g. at airports) and in healthcare, where they are used to identify patients, medicines and medical equipment, significantly improving the safety and efficiency of healthcare.
In 1992, Norman Joseph Woodland was honoured with the National Medal of Technology by President George H.W. Bush for his invention and contribution to the commercialisation of barcode technology, which improved productivity in every sector of industry and gave rise to an entire barcode industry. In 2011, Woodland and Silver were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Woodland died on December 9, 2012, at the age of 91 at his home in New Jersey, leaving behind a legacy that forever changed the world.
The barcode, which initially seemed merely a simple solution to a supermarket problem, turned out to be one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. It became the foundation of global trade, enabling the development of complex supply chains, the automation of logistics processes and the emergence of new industries. Today, in the age of digitalisation and artificial intelligence, the barcode continues to evolve, adapting to new challenges. However, its basic principle – simple, brilliant and universal – has remained unchanged for over seventy years, since Woodland drew the first four lines in the sand on a Miami beach.
Fot. Pixabay
