How the Barcode Made Our Modern Economy

When it comes to shopping, the barcode has made completing transactions and logging inventory a breeze. The technology has made tremendous strides since it was first introduced in the 1970s, including allowing consumers themselves to scan products for details even while they shop.

Before the barcode was introduced, managing inventory could be a tedious task. Workers had to manually label each item on store shelves and in turn, cashiers were required to manually tally a bill by entering each price into the register. Not only was this process painstakingly long, there was also plenty of room for human error.

A Philadelphia grocery store manager had become so frustrated with the slow checkout process in his store that he took his concerns to a dean at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia in hopes that he would be able to find a solution, but his plea went unheard -- or so he thought.

Bernard Silver, a graduate student at the time, overheard the conversation and relayed the information to Joe Woodland, another Drexel grad student and established inventor, who was immediately captivated by the idea and began brainstorming ways to find a fix.

Woodland halted his grad studies and relocated to Miami Beach to work on a plan that would help grocers move customers in and out of stores at a faster rate. The idea for the first barcode came as Woodland sat on the beach drawing lines in the sand. He apparently likened the lines in the sand to dots and dashes that exist in morse code.

Woodland would apply the same general idea of morse code to those sand drawings. He figured he would be able to establish numerous codes by changing the line sizes through increasing or decreasing their width. He returned to Philadelphia, and with the help of Silver, the two developed a prototype system and filed a patent for the technology in 1949.

First Barcodes Implemented at Kroger

However, the prototype that would actually read the barcodes failed because the internal light, a 500-watt incandescent lightbulb, was not bright enough and the machine lacked a minicomputer that could process information. 

"They really needed something that was an intra-industry identifier that would uniquely say what was a can of beans versus a box of cereal, so that they could move product more efficiently and move product more quickly and cut down costs and really cut down wait times for the consumers who were standing in line at grocery stores," said Carrie Wilkie, senior vice president of enterprise program delivery at the nonprofit standards organization GS1 US.

Woodland eventually halted progress on developing the barcode after running into a wall, and it wasn't picked up again until 1966 when the Kroger supermarket chain began raising concerns about the development of a more efficient checkout process. The chain began advertising for help in creating a new scanning system.

By that point, Woodland's prototype was shelved simply because the advancements to make it work didn't exist in the 1940s, but as the patent sat collecting dust, the microchip and laser had been invented. These pieces of technology would finally help process information stored in a barcode and provide a computer system that could dissect it.

Kroger tapped the Radio Corporation of America who used Woodland's original bullseye-styled barcode for the chain to try out in their stores. Initially, there were worries that the new tech would turn off customers who might view the new laser technology through a popular culture lens as being akin to death rays, often part of the realm of sci-fi movies and television shows.

Still, testing went forward in 1973 at a Cincinnati Kroger, and it was a certified hit. While printing the bullseye barcodes proved to be difficult, the outcome was exactly what supermarket managers were expecting: higher sales and quicker shopping experiences.

Taking the Scanning System Nationwide

The Ad Hoc Committee of the Universal Product Identification Code, after seeing the success of Kroger's inventory catalog and checkout process, decided this tech needed to be implemented across the supermarket industry. But in order for the tech to work effectively, the committee had to get manufacturers and retailers onboard.

After long, drawn-out, industry-wide negotiations, it seemed manufacturers and retailers came around to the idea of universal product codes. The next mountain to climb was actually designing the barcode that was effective and could be created without imperfections.

IBM was eventually tapped after engineer George Laurer figured the code didn't have to exist in a circular shape and that vertical lines could also be read by scanners at any angle. 

"What they discovered with the bars and spaces is they could put more information in, in a smaller space," Wilkie said.

Laurer moved the idea up the ladder and even presented a pitch that literally included a baseball pitcher hurling items across a scanner at various angles to show that they could still be processed. The was a hit with the higher-ups at IBM as well as the leaders from the Ad Hoc Committee. 

Just a year after Kroger tested their bullseye barcodes, IBM's prototype was launched at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio

Supermarkets and Beyond

With the success of the supermarket barcode, there was a new route toward profitability that could benefit other industries.

"There was a lot of interest to move beyond grocery and use the barcode in other ways," Wilkie noted. "It was increasing efficiency in the distribution network [and] it was really increasing efficiency for consumers."

Some of the biggest success stories come from some of the billion-dollar big box businesses like Walmart and Target. For the two companies, the barcode became essential, particularly as they grew into the behemoths they are now. The barcode allows these businesses to keep a better record of what's available on the floor, what items are in transit to their warehouses, and even the delivery of products to consumers.

The barcode even helped China become the global powerhouse it is today as companies looked to the country to fulfill growing supply chains with its cheap labor costs.

The Barcode Revolutionized Every Industry

With doctors even scanning for service or treatment during visits,.barcodes impact nearly every aspect of life with six billion scans done per day. And, they're evolving in both appearance and use. 

If you've visited a restaurant recently, you may have noticed a square-shaped, pixel-patterned QR code on your table for scanning with a mobile device in place of a traditional menu. The introduction of QR codes proved that product information didn't need to be limited to straight lines as a traditional barcode, but it could also be embedded into various sizes and shapes on a label. As a means to reduce touching surfaces and objects amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the barcode also has become part of public hygiene routines.

"We can put a URL, we can put more granular information about a product and then we can allow the manufacturer of that product to really engage with the consumer in a much deeper and more meaningful way than they can in the product package," Wilkie said.

This is part of 'The Lightbulb Moment', A Cheddar and CuriosityStream Original Series, the show that uncovers the surprising impact of less-celebrated inventions and the moments of inspiration that made them possible.

Video produced by Edward Vega and Andrew Davis. Article written by Lawrence Banton.

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How the Barcode Made Our Modern Economy

Barcodes have radically changed the world, helping fuel the rise of everything from massive companies like Walmart to major world powers like China. And it all started with a man daydreaming on a beach in 1949.

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