photo credit: Wikipedia
I remember purple inked stamping machines used to label items in a grocery store. In my youth I worked many a register where I had to punch in each and every price for each and every item.
Enter the barcode.
The very first barcode was scanned in a supermarket in Ohio, in 1974. (For trivia buffs: This first scanned product was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum, on display now at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)
But the invention goes back way way before 1974. The inspiration came on the beach to N. Joseph Woodland, back in 1948. He says he stuck his hand in the sand, and when pulling his fingers back through the sand, he saw the lines…. and …… ding! ding! ding! … the barcode was born.
N. Joseph Woodland and his friend Bernard Silver worked on the invention and filed a patent in 1949. But the tricky part, developing something to READ the lines, eluded them, and they sold their invention in 1952 for $15,000.
IBM eventually took the barcode to it’s debut in 1974, but Woodland was credited as a co-inventor and was honored by the White House in 1992 with the highest U.S. honor for technological achievement, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
N. Joseph Woodland died last week at the age of 91.
kdkh
/ December 17, 2012I also remember the days before barcodes and am old enough to recall entering prices the old-fashioned way. It was after 1974, but barcodes didn’t go everywhere immediately….
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012True… I imagine that was a pretty expensive changeover, getting readers, and scanners, etc. And the computers to set it all up. It was probably a big ordeal to adopt that bit of technology.
on thehomefrontandbeyond
/ December 17, 2012I had a store where we wrote out the receipts–we were retro in 1991
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012I think a lot of small stores still do that. Personal touch!
sheridegrom - From the literary and legislative trenches.
/ December 17, 2012Not to mention what a problem it was to enter the code by hand when the computer wouldn’t read the scan–half the time it meant the information had never been entered into inventory.
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012Now that is a pain for the person at the register, isn’t it!!!
dadirri7
/ December 18, 2012an inspiring story, i had no idea where the barcode came from, and now it is everywhere in retail … the inventiveness of the human mind is incredible …
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012I enjoy finding things like this, the “how did it start” stories. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Chancy and Mumsy (Mag)
/ December 18, 2012I too remember the days before barcodes and all those items I placed prices on when I worked at a grocery store. This was an interesting post. I had not ever heard how the barcode invention took place. Hugs
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012and when the prices went up, even by a penny, you would have to go back and do all those prices all over again!!
jacquiefioramonti
/ December 18, 2012When we left Zimbabwe in the mid eighties, the barcode had still not arrived there and, if I remember correctly, it took a good few years after that before it arrived in South Africa. Did you also have people there who would not buy barcoded goods because they thought it had something to do with the devil?
Seriously, some people here did. There were also those who thought it would ‘steal’ jobs. Now, we can’t imagine a world without them.
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012Oh, my. No, I never heard the devil thing. But losing jobs…. yes. And it did, I’m sure. Technology is about to squeeze jobs out of tollbooth operators, here, now. The whole Pennsylvania turnpike is planning to go to “readers” only, no live people, in the next few years. “Toll Booth Collector” will be a job of the past.
tchistorygal
/ December 18, 2012How. Interesting. I wonder how he connected those lines into prices? I could see those lines until I died, and I would never have put them together!!
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012I’m just like that, too. The light bulb would not have ignited in my head!
tchistorygal
/ December 18, 2012Hi Kathy, I mean really – lines in the sand???? Dollar signs??? Numbers??? The least he could have done is write a book explaining the link!! Marsha
sharechair
/ December 19, 2012LuAnn
/ December 18, 2012I saw a news report on this and found it fascinating that from a simple gesture of running a hand through the sand, the idea of the barcode took flight.
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012It shows that inspiration can come from anywhere. I’d still be making sand pictures.
LuAnn
/ December 18, 2012Or be mesmerized watching the sand slip through my fingers!
sharechair
/ December 19, 2012That is where my mind would stop.
cindy knoke
/ December 18, 2012I certainly do remember….interesting!
sharechair
/ December 18, 2012I always enjoy learning the origins of things.
Enchanted Seashells
/ December 22, 2012What an inspired invention. This was something I didn’t know and it’s fascinating. Thanks for the info!
sharechair
/ December 22, 2012I enjoy learning things like this. Glad you do, too!