Inventing the Barcode System

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 had a fairly clear idea of what needed to be done and he was obsessed enough to use his own money to find a system that worked. The first system he and Woodland developed used ultraviolet ink, but it proved both too expensive and untrustworthy, as the ink faded. He later claimed that Morse code gave him the inspiration that led to his first successful barcode design. He took the Morse code dots and dashes and put them in rows.

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. Silver and Woodland received their first patent for the new technology in 1952. Silver started working for IBM in 1951, who was, ironically, deeply involved in punch-card technology. Silver tried to interest the corporate giant in his project, and IBM actually commissioned a report which indicated the idea was feasible, but involved technology that was simply unavailable at the time.

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 was simply too large, and the technology for reducing it in size was unavailable in the 1950s. 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. Work had already been done in the railroad industry on a system with the same objectives as Silver and Woodlands barcodes.

This alternative system was developed by David Collins and promoted by Sylvania. 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. Meanwhile Philco sold the barcode patent rights to RCA.

By the late 1960s we were beginning to see the forerunners of todays "big box stores" and they needed more convenient and reliable ways to control their inventory. 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. By the 1970s IBM became involved in barcode technology development again and put Norman Woodland in charge of their project. The rest, they say, is history.

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