Barcodes are small symbolic patterns that relay information about the identity of a product. We tend not to notice how pervasive barcodes have become, but it was not always that way.

The first used of early barcode technology was for keeping track of railroad cars. But barcodes didn’t become part of our everyday life until they were adopted by supermarkets.|But the barcode’s true commercial niche was in automating supermarket checkout systems.}

Now, barcode scanning is implemented by the US Post Office, The Department of Defense, and just about every industrial application you can think of. In 1948 Bernard Silver began research into a system that could automatically read product information. Together with Joseph Woodland, the first workable system was developed using ultraviolet ink. While working at IBM Woodland developed a system based on extending Morse Code in a graphical manner.

What Woodland and his team did was to extend the dots and dashes of the code into narrow or wide vertical lines capable of being interpreted by a reader. The lines were read by shining a high intensity light through the paper onto an RCA935 photomultiplier tube. Later, a bulls-eye pattern was used so that scanning would work in either direction.

In 1952 RCA purchased the patent and began to develop the system further. It wasn’t until 1961 that The Boston and Maine Railroads tested the system on gravel cars. Right around the same time the idea was being discussed by the large grocery chains in the U.S.

It was the Kroger chain who first volunteered to test the RCA system based on the bulls-eye code. And by 1969, Computer Identics; a company formed by David Collins of the Pennsylvania Railroad, installed the first two systems at General Motors in Pontiac, Michigan and The General Trading Company in Carlstadt, New Jersey. These, among other initial financiers allowed barcode use to prove itself as viable in many different environments. However, almost from the beginning the most common application of the technology was in large retail situations such as grocery stores. It helps businesses to improve trade efficiency and as a result, the economy as a whole.

The Universal Product Code (UPC) became the barcode standard in the mid 1970s. This was an 11 digit code to identify any product, and since then, industry has not been the same. Barcodes really came into their with the development of the standard 11 digit UPC. The acceptance of barcode technology was assured with these developments, and since the early 1980s it has become virtually universally used throughout business and government.