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Home - bar code
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History:
Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver developed the idea for the
barcode. Woodland
and Silver filed U.S. patent 2,612,994 on October 20, 1949 for
"Classifying Apparatus and Method. They were issued the patent on
October 7, 1952.
Woodland who was an IBM employee and Silver built the first barcode
reader in 1952. This first prototype used a 500-watt light bulb and a
RCA photo multiplier vacuum tube. This device was not practical nor was
it commercially produced. Woodland and Silver, sold the patent to Phil
co in 1962, which later sold the patent to RCA. In 1960, the invention
of the laser permitted barcode readers to be manufactured inexpensively,
and the integrated circuit made decoding the barcode practical.
A Kroger store in Cincinnati tested the bull's-eye barcode reader in
1972, with help from RCA. The bulls-eye barcodes were not successful. On
April 3, 1973, Woodland at IBM developed the linear barcode, which was
adopted as the Universal Product Code, or UPC. History was made on June
26, 1974, when a pack of Wrigleys Juicy Fruit chewing gum became the
first retail product sold using a barcode reader. This historical event
occurred at Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio. This very pack of gum can
be seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
President George H. W. Bush awarded the National Medal of Technology to
Woodland
in 1992.
The next historical advancement was in 2004 when Nanosys Inc. produced
nano barcodes.
Nano barcodes can be used to identify harmful and deadly viruses and
bacteria. This advanced technology may help in the diagnostic process.
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