The U.P.C. Barcode: History of a Commerce Revolution
The beep of a supermarket scanner and the sight of those little black and white lines on an item’s sale tag are so commonplace today that most of us don’t even think about them. But this ubiquitous technology has been described as the most significant productivity improvement in the grocery industry since the introduction of the supermarket.

On June 26, 1974, a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum bought at an Ohio supermarket became the first item ever to be scanned for purchase using a Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) barcode. This small purchase became a watershed event that would change the world of commerce forever. The use of this barcode marked the first time the grocery industry could identify and electronically capture what was sold at point of purchase—and the first step in making the global supply chain more visible, secure, and sustainable.

Today, close to 40 years after that historical event, the standards behind the barcode have grown into the global GS1 System, used by more than one million companies doing business in 150 countries across more than 20 industries. In the United States, more than 200,000 member companies rely on GS1 US for the standards required to identify their products, companies, and locations using both physical markings such as barcodes and electronic information flowing between trading partners in their 21st century supply chain.

But let’s go back.

The Birth of the Barcode
The barcode itself can be traced back to 1949 and Norman Joseph Woodland, a graduate student and teacher at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University). Woodland was approached by a student, who had overheard the president of a food chain asking a dean to undertake research on capturing product information automatically at checkout. Woodland was intrigued by the idea.

Pondering the problem one day at the beach, Woodland considered the Morse Code. If dots and dashes could be used to send information electronically, certainly there had to be a way to electronically capture and communicate information about grocery products. Woodland started to draw dots and dashes in the sand to simulate Morse Code, and then extended them downward with his fingers. What appeared were thin lines resulting from the dots and thick lines from the dashes—a two-dimensional Morse Code—and the beginnings of the bars and spaces that make up today’s U.P.C. barcode.

Grocery Gets It Going
In the late 1960s, faced with increasing costs and decreasing profits, trade associations representing the two branches of the food distribution system conducted a series of meetings that culminated in 1969 with a decision to seek a standard “interindustry product code.” The result of this meeting and four years of research was the Universal Product Code (now commonly referred to as simply the U.P.C. barcode).

Today, about five billion products are scanned every day. The U.P.C. allows supermarkets—and all stores in the retail sector—to identify products and capture information about them. Stores can control inventory more efficiently, provide a faster and more accurate checkout for customers, and easily gather information for accurate and immediate reporting. Barcodes are used in the medical industry to encode patient information and in the shipping industry to track and deliver packages. The U.P.C. is now used to identify and capture information in all facets of the food and beverage industry, as well as in government, the industrial/commercial industry, and the transportation industry.

Beyond the Barcode
GS1 US—initially known as the Uniform Product Code Council and then the Uniform Code Council—has been improving the supply chain since 1974 by creating and leveraging global GS1 Standards. With evolving needs and advancing technology, GS1 US has continued to develop innovative ways to help companies and industries identify, capture, and share supply chain information globally.