• 1948 – Bernard Silver, grad student at Drexel Institute of Technology overhears conversation between Food Fair President and Dean of DIT to create a system to auto-read products during checkout.
  • Silver’s friend and partner, Norman Woodland leaved DIT to develop a barcode based on the dots and dashes of morse code by extending the lines downward.
  • Woodland creates a barcode reading system using a movie projector lamp and then decides the barcode should be in a circle for ease of reading.
  • 1949 – Woodland and Silver file US Patent for both linear and bullseye patterns along with a variety of mechanical and electronic reading devices.
  • 1951 – Woodland joins IBM. IBM interested but doesn’t feel that the technology to process the data is not yet possible.
  • David Collins develops a system, KarTrack, for railroad industry using blue and red refective striped encoding a 10 digit number to track railroad cars – data fed into two photomultipliers filtering out red and blue.
  • 1962 – IBM makes bid to buy patent, Philco makes a better offer. Philco sells patent to RCA.
  • 1966 – National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) begins discussions to automate checkout systems.
  • 1967 – KarTrack installation begins.
  • 1970 NAFC sets guidelines and creates a symbol selection committee.
  • 1972 RCA begins 18 month test that fails.
  • 1973 George Laurer/IBM develops linear UPC system including UPC A and E which becomes the format accepted by NAFC.
  • 1974 NCR installs flatbed scanner at Marsh’s Supermarket (Ohio).
  • June 26 1974, first item scanned (Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum).
  • 1981 DoD adopts Code 39 for all inventory sold to the US military causing the wide adaptation of barcodes.