The History of the Barcode

On this episode of Our American Stories, barcodes, on most products properly called a UPC, or “Universal Product Code,” are a necessity for everyday life. Here’s the History Guy with the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Our next story
comes to us from a man who's simply known as
the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of
thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube. The
History Guy has also heard here and our American stories.
Bar codes on most products properly called a UPC or

(00:33):
universal product code, or a necessity for everyday life. Here's
the History Guy with the story. They become so common
that they're on virtually every consumer product that you might buy,
from a box of cookies to an action figure, to
every automobile that has been built since nineteen eighty one.

(00:53):
There are on mail, they're on scannable tickets in COVID concerns.
They were used to access restaurant menus. Bars have become
so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. But bar
codes are an absolute necessity in the modern world. There
would allow the vast and complex trade networks and supply
chains of the modern world to function. According to GS one,

(01:17):
which is a nonprofit that maintains barcode standards, there were
some five billion barcode scanned every day in twenty twelve.
It is history that deserves to be remembered. Humans have
engaged in trade from millennia far back into prehistory. For
most of human existence, this was done by bartering, impromptu
trading sessions that involve personal negotiations of goods and services

(01:39):
without any money involved. As societies grew more complex, bartering
became less convenient, especially when humans introduced civilization in the
concept of government, civilizations grew, economies developed, and trade grew
increasingly complex. In the ancient Middle East, civilizations like the
Acadians and the Sumerians developed writing largely to keep records,
and one of the most important uses of records was

(02:00):
in trade. At its most basic, the concept of a
bar code was to automate and streamline that system so
that businesses and manufacturers and transit systems could cheek tack
of the millions of items that are moved and sold
at countless retailers, trading centers, and factories every day. The
twenty first century and the development of consumer culture further
complicated selling items using price booklets or memory. Huge varieties

(02:23):
of brand of products would massively increase the number and
kind of products, so that whole aisles could be filled
with the same product being sold at different prices by
different companies and became impossible for a salesperson to memorize
even a fraction of a storre's prices. In nineteen forty eight,
Philadelphia Drexel Institute of Technology graduate named Bernard Bob Silvers
said to have overheard a conversation between a supermarket manager

(02:46):
and the Dean of Engineering at Drexel. The manager was
hoping that the dean could consider working on some way
of automating the checkout process so that choppers could move
through the store more quickly. After all, in nineteen forty eight,
the cashier had to menially check each item, determine a price,
and add that together for a total. According to the
story of the dean was uninterested, but Silver was intrigued
and confident that there was a solution. Silver mentioned the

(03:08):
conversation to fellow Drextful student Norman Joseph Woodland, who began
working on some concepts. He was quickly convinced that a
workable solution could be found. One of the first concepts
was used patterns of ink that would glow under ultraviolet light,
and the paarabuilt a device to test the idea. While
at work, they found that the ink faded and was
too expensive. Woodland decided to dedicate himself to the problem.

(03:30):
He left his teaching job at the university and cashed
in some stocks to tie him over while he worked,
and went to live in an apartment owned by his
grandfather in Miami Beach. While working in Miami Beach, he
had his epiphany. According to Woodland, he was sitting on
the beach thinking when the solution presented itself. He had
learned Morse code as a boy scout and considered the
long and short sounds by drawing them physically on the sand.

(03:53):
He described the moment. I remember I was thinking about
dots and dashes when I poked my four fingers into
the sand. For whatever reason I didn't know. I pulled
my hand towards me, and I had four lines, and
I said, golly, now I have four lines, and they
could be wide lines and narrow lines instead of dots
and dashes. Now I have a better chance of finding
the dog gone thing. Then, only seconds later, I took

(04:15):
my four fingers. They were still in the sand, and
I swept them around in a circle. First barcode was
drawn out in the sand a Miami Beach with then
returned to Drexel with his new idea, which still faced
the problem of how to read the data once it
was encoded in the binary barcode. He turned to another
technology to find the solution. In nineteen nineteen, inventor Lee

(04:37):
de Forest was awarded several patents that he used to
develop the optical sound on film technology, the technology necessary
to create the first talk eat films. The four system
printed a pattern along a film strip that varied the
amount of transparency, and then shone a light through the
film as the picture ran. A sensitive tube could then
translate the shifts in brightness and convert the information to sound.

(04:59):
All Land needed was a light and a similar sensitive
tube to detect the information. During their work, they chose
to change the design from linear bars to coincentric circles
of varying thickness, creating the Bull's eye barcode. The idea
of the Bull's eye code was that it could be
read from any direction. In nineteen fifty one, the pair
set out to build the first barcode reader in Woodland's
living room. The initial device was the size of a desk,

(05:21):
had to be completely wrapped in oilcloth to keep out
any ambient light. It used a bright light and an
RCA nine thirty five photo multiplier tube originally designed for
the sound on film systems to read the data. The
light was so bright that as they tested the device
some of the paper printed with barcodes actually began smoldering,
but they proved using in acilioscope that the system could
read information from the barcodes. Of course, there remained several

(05:44):
practical issues with the invention. Installing them across the country
was impossible given the expense of the five hundred watt bulb,
which created an enormous amount of waste heat. That bulb
was an awful thing to look at. Woodland later said
it could cause eye damage. What they needed was a
way to focus a large amount of light with little

(06:04):
heat and in a more compact space, but in nineteen
fifty one lasers didn't exist. They were awarded the patent
for the designs and apparatus on October seven, nineteen fifty two.
The year before, Woodland had been hired by IBM, and
both he and Silver hope to convince the company to
pursue the technology by continually pestering IBM to take a

(06:25):
look at the concept. IBM finally commissioned to report on
the concept in the late nineteen fifties, which concluded that
the concept was interesting, but as of then impossible to
implement without further technological advancement. IBM did allegedly offered to
buy the patent, but not at a price that the
inventor's thought was sufficient. The patent only granted Woodland and
Silver seventeen years of protection. In time was rapidly running

(06:46):
out for them to effectively make money on their invention,
and so in nineteen sixty two, when phil Co, a
pioneer in battery radio and television production, offered to buy
the patent for fifteen thousand dollars, they accepted this would
be the only money the pair made off their invention,
and if here. Bob Silver died of broncho pneumonia brought
on by leukemia at age thirty eight. Phil Co would
later sell the patent to RCA somewhere in the nineteen sixties.

(07:09):
In nineteen sixty six, the National Association of Food Chains
had a meeting on automated checkout systems. RCA, which owned
Woodland and Silver's original patent, was at the meeting and
began working on a project to deliver a checkout scanner.
In the mid seventies, the NAFC established the ad Hoc
Committee for US Supermarkets on Uniform Grocery Product Code to
manage competing technologies and standardizing approach. The ad Hoc Committee

(07:32):
developed an eleven number code and asked companies to design
a system to read it. RCA attracted attention for their
bulls eye code in nineteen seventy one, and IBM decided
to develop a competing technology. Someone remembered that Joe Woodland
still worked at the company and began a new facility
in North Carolina with Woodland to make it happen. George
laure Or, a long time IBM employee, came to the

(07:52):
conclusion that the bulls eye pattern wouldn't work when you
run a circle through a high speed press. There are
parts that are always going to get smeared, he recalled.
RCIA was learning this at the same time at a
test store in Cincinnati. So Lauer came up with his
own code using vertical lines, ironically similar to Woodland's original concept.
It took some time to develop a system that was

(08:12):
small enough to fit on most products while still being readable. Eventually,
based on a bar code called Delta C, developed by
Bill Krause. The Delta C system was robust and able
to read even damaged, dirty, or bent codes. The UPC
code was born, and in nineteen seventy three it was
established as the standard for the National Association of Food Chains.

(08:33):
IBM developed the IBM thirty six sixty scanner with a
digital point of sale terminal UPC's. The grocery industry, from
supplies to supermarkets, adopted the technology wholesale. On June twenty six,
nineteen seventy four, Clyde Dawson, head of R and D
with Mars Supermarket, handed over a multipack of Wrigley's Gone,
which became the first UPC code to be scanned. Came

(08:55):
out to sixty nine cents. Dawson later said he chose
gum specifically because of a small size to prove the
usefulness of the barcode. In nineteen ninety two, Woodland was
awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest
hounitor of the US can confer to a US citizen
for technological achievement. It took a while for barcodes to
fully catch on, but of course they did, largely facilitated

(09:17):
when large chains like Kmart and Walmarts started using them.
Perhaps one of the most important of the early adopters
of barcodes was the United States Military, which is their
own code called the Code thirty nine. Now, barcodes are
on all sorts of products. They're used for stock checking
and inventory maintenance, and of course for checkout scanning. Since

(09:37):
the nineteen seventies, the types of barcodes have proliferated to
things that don't even really look like barcodes, so called
two D barcodes, like the QR code and data matrix
and mexicode adorned all sorts of products. A barcode with
a vehicle identification number has been required in all newly
manufactured automobiles in the United States since nineteen eighty one,
and barcodes have been required on pharmaceuticals since two thousand

(09:58):
and four. Know the way society tracks dating is a
hallmark of civilization, begun millennia ago when the Mesopotamians first
started to develop writing, computers and lasers. Especially as our barcodes,
they're really just part of a long string of technologies
that have been built to facilitate commerce and make civilization

(10:18):
just a little bit easier and a terrific job on
the editing by Greg Hangler and the production and the
special thanks to the History Guy. If you want more
stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his YouTube channel,
The History Guy Colin History deserves to be remembered. The
story of the barcode here on our American Stories