Barcodes are everywhere today, but it hasn’t actually been that way for very long. 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. Previous attempts at developing a similar system using punch cards never caught on due to the prohibitive equipment costs and the Great Depression.

Silver was so enthused by the problem, he continued pursuing it without funding. The first system he and Woodland developed used ultraviolet ink, but it proved both too expensive and untrustworthy, as the ink faded. 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.

Of course having a system to read these codes was another matter. For this Silver adapted technology used for reading the sound scores on movie film. Silver and Woodland received their first patent for the new technology 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.

Early barcode scanner prototypes indicated that the technology could work. The prototype was simply too large, and the technology for reducing it in size was unavailable in the 1950s. IBM attempted to buy the patents from Silver and Woodland, but they eventually got a better offer from Philco. Unfortunately Bernard Silver died in a car crash the following year.

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. Work had already been done in the railroad industry on a system with the same objectives as Silver and Woodlands barcodes.

The system used for rail cars was the work of David Collins working along with the Sylvania company. Collins tried to interest Sylvania in a smaller version of the system which could be used on anything, but Sylvania turned him down. Shortly thereafter Collins left Sylvania and co-founded the Computer Identics Corporation. Around the same time 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 companies also needed this type of technology.

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. By the 1970s IBM became involved in barcode technology development again and put Norman Woodland in charge of their project. Barcode technology’s future had finally arrived.

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