How the Barcode System Was Invented

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. 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 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 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.

Meanwhile it was becoming clear that barcode scanning technology could be used by grocery stores who were trying to maintain the right amount of inventory, and railroads struggling to keep track of their many cars. The railroad industry, still very strong in those days, adopted a system similar to the barcode

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.

Collins’ Computer Identics quietly installed rudimentary, hand-built barcode and scanning systems in a General Motors (GM) plant in Michigan, and the General Trading Company in New Jersey. 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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