The concept of using something like a bar code to identify objects didn’t really get going until the 1950s. In 1959, David Collins who worked for Sylvania began developing a system to identify train cars that used blue and yellow reflective stripes.
The Boston and Maine Railroad tested this on their gravel cars in 1961. Then in 1967, the Association of American Railroads began installing it, but due to the economic downturn it took almost 7 years to get 95 percent of the cars completed. Not long after that the system was abandoned, and in the 1980s a similar system based on radio tags was introduced.
At more or less the same time others were becoming interested in the technology being worked on by the Sylvania team. A toll bridge in New Jersey, the U.S. Post Office, and KalKan dog food all showed an interest in seeing a simpler and cheaper version developed. The grocery industry was also becoming interested.
Meanwhile Collins had left Sylvania and had created his own company, Computer Identics, which started working with helium neon lasers. They developed a system which used a mirror to locate the bar code. This new barcode scanner technology could even read ripped codes. In 1969, General Motors in Michigan and a distribution center in Carsbad, New Jersey were the first to use this system to track car axles and a hundred models of doors.
The spring of 1971 saw RCA showing off their bullseye code at a industry meeting. Crowds formed, including IBM specialists who remembered that their company still employed Woodland, the system’s inventor. Soon IBM had their own encoding system. Meanwhile RCA was having problems with smeared ink which rendered their codes unreadable. But IBM’s version, when printed in the direction of the stripes, was superior, since extra ink simply made the code taller.
The National Association of Food Chains selected the IBM UPC code on April 3, 1973, as their standard and tested it that year using a barcode scanning system at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. On June 26, 1974, Clyde Dawson took a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum out of his shopping basket and Sharon Buchanan scanned it at 8:01 am. History was made. That pack of gum and the receipt are on on display at the Smithsonian.
For the first couple of years the predicted savings to the retail industry were not achieved. It took a while for the bulk of retailers to switch from traditional stocking and pricing methods. Manufacturers were slow to shell out for barcode labels and the attendant hardware. But the shift began to gradually take place, and the rest, as they say, is history.
