Invention of the Bar Code Revolutionizes Retail Sales and Inventory Control
Overview
While early technological developments in bar coding were stimulated by possible retail applications, the first actual bar codes appeared in industrial settings. From a 1932 Harvard University master's thesis to imprinted codes on the side of railway cars in the 1960s to today's ubiquitous Universal Product Codes printed on manufacturers' and consumer products worldwide, bar code technology evolved from a simplistic checkout scheme to widespread inventory control and data collection systems. By the end of the twentieth century, bar code technology had found numerous worldwide applications across all industries. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturer-specific identification numbers—with no telling how many product codes based on those manufacturer codes—had been assigned not just for retail and consumer goods but also in other commercial, industrial, and government sectors in countries worldwide.
Background
In 1932 a Harvard University business student named Wallace Flint wrote his master's thesis on a proposed punched card supermarket checkout scheme. Inspired by a punched card system developed for the 1890 U.S. Census, Flint envisioned a system in which consumers would make their merchandise selections by removing corresponding punched cards from a catalog and handing the cards to a checkout attendant.
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