Short answer The barcode came from Morse code drawn in sand, and the first thing scanned was gum.
That beep at the checkout. The barcode is older than you'd think.
Norman Joseph Woodland, an American, got the idea while drawing Morse code in the sand at the beach.
Stretch the dots and dashes of Morse code straight down and you get thin bars and thick bars.
1952the year the barcode patent was granted
But there was no machine to read it. It took more than 20 years to reach real stores.
June 26, 1974, a supermarket in Ohio, USA. The first item ever rung up with a barcode was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum.
The historic first customer was gum?
A replica of that gum pack went on display at the Smithsonian museum in the US.
Numbers are hidden in the width and spacing of the bars. The machine uses those numbers to look up the product.
Sources
Photo credits
- Upc reader.jpg, Michael Shanks, Public domain (source)
- Juicy Fruit.jpg, Alexander Staubo from Oslo, Norway, CC BY-SA 2.0 (source)
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