You likely already know that if you're going to market your product line in any serious fashion, buying barcodes for every single one of your products is nothing short of an absolute must. Ever wonder, though, exactly why we use barcodes on products today? Take a look.
Barcodes were actually invented to help supermarkets in the United States. As these businesses outgrew their former tiny "general store" type environment and worked their way into large retail outlets, maintaining an inventory of the right size was quite difficult. The larger they became, the harder it was to count every can and bag in the place, and that made it tough to decide how much to order and when to do so.
The very first barcodes and scanning equipment came in the form of punch cards, which were developed for the 1890 U.S. Census. It would take several decades, but the technology was eventually adapted for use in supermarkets. In 1932, Wallace Flint, a professor at the Harvard School of Business Administration, led a small group of students to design a system by which customers would complete their list of proposed merchandise to purchase using one of those punch cards. The checker then rang up the entire order thanks to the punch card. It helped to update the inventory records. Unfortunately, the system was far from practical. The equipment was bulky and expensive, and given that the United States was at the very height of the Great Depression, it simply wasn't a realistic option. More than anything else, though, it served as a hint of the potential that remained untapped.
Modern barcodes remained elusive until 1948. Bernard Silver was a graduate student in Philadelphia at the Drexel Institute of Technology. One day, he overheard the president of a local supermarket chain asking one of the deans to develop a system that would read product information while customers were checking out in his stores. It spurred a flurry of research from Silver, who began working with a friend, Norman Joseph Woodland, to solve the problem. Their initial idea used patterns of ink that glowed only under ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, the solution had a few problems of its own. It was quite expensive to print the patterns. There was also a matter of ink instability that led to numerous issues with the system. A year later, however, the two managed to file a patent for their barcode symbol. It looked a bit like today's 1D barcodes. Made up of four white lines on a dark background, seven different classifications were possible, but even in the early days, the inventors made it clear that with more lines, more classifications would be possible.
Despite those advancements in the technology, barcodes wouldn't go into use heavily for nearly two decades. In 1966, the National Association of Food Chains began looking for equipment that would help speed up the checkout process. A year later, one of the very first scanning systems was installed in Ohio, a state in the middle of the United States. The store in which it was installed had employees sticker each item with one of the Woodland and Silver barcodes, then checkers could scan it as customers brought it to checkout. The advances here were clear, but so were the problems involved. After all, virtually everyone realized that a standard coding scheme would have to be in place for this to become truly useful technology. In the summer of 1970, the University Grocery Products Identification Code was developed and released. Just three years later, the adoption of the modern UPC symbol set still used throughout the U.S. went into effect. By 1974, UPC scanners were being used across the country, and in the late 70s, nearly 85% of all products had a UPC symbol on them.
Today, barcodes are far from restricted to retail applications. Instead, they're utilized across industry lines to help companies track various thinks. Militaries across the world use them to track equipment. Hospitals use them to keep track of patients, medications, and more. Even Federal Express, a global shipping giant, uses it to track packages and reroute logistics where necessary.
Barcodes brought a brand new way of doing business to the world, and if you're part of that landscape, your business will need to consider purchasing the right barcodes to help you move forward. We're here for you. With high quality options to make certain you can market your products throughout South Africa and beyond, we offer more to your business for less, and there's never a renewal fee when you work with us. Contact us today to learn more about what our barcodes can do for your business. The technology has come a long way since punch cards, and so has your business. Take it one step further with our barcodes.
Barcodes were actually invented to help supermarkets in the United States. As these businesses outgrew their former tiny "general store" type environment and worked their way into large retail outlets, maintaining an inventory of the right size was quite difficult. The larger they became, the harder it was to count every can and bag in the place, and that made it tough to decide how much to order and when to do so.
The very first barcodes and scanning equipment came in the form of punch cards, which were developed for the 1890 U.S. Census. It would take several decades, but the technology was eventually adapted for use in supermarkets. In 1932, Wallace Flint, a professor at the Harvard School of Business Administration, led a small group of students to design a system by which customers would complete their list of proposed merchandise to purchase using one of those punch cards. The checker then rang up the entire order thanks to the punch card. It helped to update the inventory records. Unfortunately, the system was far from practical. The equipment was bulky and expensive, and given that the United States was at the very height of the Great Depression, it simply wasn't a realistic option. More than anything else, though, it served as a hint of the potential that remained untapped.
Modern barcodes remained elusive until 1948. Bernard Silver was a graduate student in Philadelphia at the Drexel Institute of Technology. One day, he overheard the president of a local supermarket chain asking one of the deans to develop a system that would read product information while customers were checking out in his stores. It spurred a flurry of research from Silver, who began working with a friend, Norman Joseph Woodland, to solve the problem. Their initial idea used patterns of ink that glowed only under ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, the solution had a few problems of its own. It was quite expensive to print the patterns. There was also a matter of ink instability that led to numerous issues with the system. A year later, however, the two managed to file a patent for their barcode symbol. It looked a bit like today's 1D barcodes. Made up of four white lines on a dark background, seven different classifications were possible, but even in the early days, the inventors made it clear that with more lines, more classifications would be possible.
Despite those advancements in the technology, barcodes wouldn't go into use heavily for nearly two decades. In 1966, the National Association of Food Chains began looking for equipment that would help speed up the checkout process. A year later, one of the very first scanning systems was installed in Ohio, a state in the middle of the United States. The store in which it was installed had employees sticker each item with one of the Woodland and Silver barcodes, then checkers could scan it as customers brought it to checkout. The advances here were clear, but so were the problems involved. After all, virtually everyone realized that a standard coding scheme would have to be in place for this to become truly useful technology. In the summer of 1970, the University Grocery Products Identification Code was developed and released. Just three years later, the adoption of the modern UPC symbol set still used throughout the U.S. went into effect. By 1974, UPC scanners were being used across the country, and in the late 70s, nearly 85% of all products had a UPC symbol on them.
Today, barcodes are far from restricted to retail applications. Instead, they're utilized across industry lines to help companies track various thinks. Militaries across the world use them to track equipment. Hospitals use them to keep track of patients, medications, and more. Even Federal Express, a global shipping giant, uses it to track packages and reroute logistics where necessary.
Barcodes brought a brand new way of doing business to the world, and if you're part of that landscape, your business will need to consider purchasing the right barcodes to help you move forward. We're here for you. With high quality options to make certain you can market your products throughout South Africa and beyond, we offer more to your business for less, and there's never a renewal fee when you work with us. Contact us today to learn more about what our barcodes can do for your business. The technology has come a long way since punch cards, and so has your business. Take it one step further with our barcodes.