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The barcode may be everywhere today, but it is a relatively recent invention. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and so it was with the barcode. Overhearing a local merchant’s request for a quick-method system to read product information at the checkout counter, graduate student Bernard Silver and his friend, Norman Woodland, started working on a number of systems. Silver was likely unaware that another inventor had developed a system using punch cards back in the 1930s.

Silver was so enthused by the problem, he continued pursuing it without funding. Initial attempts used ultraviolet ink but the ink faded too quickly and the process was too expensive. He was then inspired by Morse code and later claimed the first barcode design he created was in the Florida sand. He simply elongated the dots and dashes of Morse code to create what would later become the barcode design.

He then used technology developed for movie soundtracks to read it, but was moved to change the box design to a bullseye so it could be read in any direction. In 1949, the pair applied for a patent they received in 1952. By this time they had started working at IBM whose initial evaluation of the project concluded it was feasible but needed specific technological developments before it could be commercially viable.

It didn’t help that the prototype barcode scanner reading device set the paper ablaze either, but it did work. Still, IBM’s report proved accurate, as the 500-watt incandescent bulb was simply too much. The prototype reader system was also too large to be practical and they had no easy way to make it smaller. While IBM offered to purchase the patent for far less than it was worth, Silver and Woodland persevered. In 1962, Philco bought the patents. Before the project with Philco could go very far Bernard Silver was killed in a car crash.

Even back then the need for a barcode scanner system capable of keeping track of inventory was significant. Two prime examples were grocery stores and railroads, but as it turned out a system for tracking individual items had application in almost any industry. The railroad industry, still very strong in those days, adopted a system similar to the barcode

This alternative system was developed by David Collins and promoted by Sylvania. Collins recognized the application of the technology to industries other than railroads, but Sylvania was not interested. Shortly thereafter Collins left Sylvania and co-founded the Computer Identics Corporation. Meanwhile Philco sold the barcode patent rights to RCA.

Development began in earnest in the late 1960s, as the grocery industry now demanded such technology. Manufacturing was also becoming more complex and competitive and needed more sophisticated methods of inventory and asset control.

The first installations made by Computer Identics were relatively crude systems placed in a Michigan General Motors plant and a warehouse in New Jersey owned by the General Trading Company. Kroger offered to test-drive the laser-guided system RCA was developing. In the 1970s, RCA’s limited success with its bullseye barcode attracted the attention of, you guessed it, IBM, who tapped staffer, Norman Woodland himself, to handle the project. Barcode technology’s future had finally arrived.

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