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Home > About GS1 US > UCC History > U.P.C. Background > Bar Code Origin |
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The Origins of a Code |
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What started as an inspiration to make the retail industry more efficient, has spun off to create coding technology that is used in industries across the business spectrum. The idea behind this revolutionary technology started with a thesis paper written at Harvard - not 25 years ago, but 67 years ago.
Wallace Flint, son of a Massachusetts grocery wholesaler, proposed a system using punch cards and flow racks that would automatically dispense products to customers. This marked the first time that someone had documented research into the advantages of an automated check out for the grocery industry. Flint would emerge again, 40 years later, as the vice president of the National Association of Food Chains and an active supporter of standards for a code system.
However, the modern day bar code traces its origins back to 1949 and a 27-year-old graduate student and teacher at the Drexel Institute of Technology - Norman Joseph Woodland. Woodland was approached by Bernard Silver, a Drexel student, who had overheard the president of a food chain asking a dean at the university to undertake research on capturing product information automatically at check out.
Woodland was intrigued by the idea. One day, while at the beach, he continued to ponder the problem and all that could come to his mind was Morse Code. If dots and dashes could be used to send information electronically, certainly there had to be a way to capture information on grocery products that could be communicated electronically. Woodland started to draw dots and dashes in the sand to simulate Morse Code, and then extended them downward with his fingers. What appeared were thin lines resulting from the dots and thick lines from the dashes - a two - dimensional Morse Code |
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