Barcodes
or: lasers that yell at you at self-checkout
An inventor sketched the first barcode in the sand on Miami Beach in 19491 by stretching Morse code into lines. Now a global standards body hands out a unique number for nearly every product you can buy, printed as stripes and read by lasers and cameras about 10 billion times a day2, more often than people search Google, so a store knows exactly which gum you bought, what it cost, and when to order more.
How it works, badly
Wait, is that real?
Yes, including the beach.
The beach↩
Norman Joseph Woodland drew the first version of the barcode in the sand on Miami Beach in 1949, borrowing from Morse code but using thick and thin lines instead of dots and dashes. He applied for a patent that year and got it in 1952.
The first beep↩
The first scan of a modern product barcode happened on June 26, 1974, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio: cashier Sharon Buchanan scanned a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum that cost 67 cents. The rectangular design came from George Laurer. Adoption was slow; only about 1% of grocers had scanners by the end of the 1970s, but within another decade more than half of US grocery stores used them.
The billions↩
The barcode standards body GS1 says barcodes are scanned about 10 billion times a day worldwide, and compares that with roughly 8.5 billion Google searches a day.
The fine print↩
Early scanners swept a laser across the stripes; many today use cameras instead. “More often than people search Google” is GS1’s own comparison, and both numbers are estimates. And the yelling isn’t the barcode’s fault: “unexpected item” usually means the bagging-area scale weighed something it didn’t expect.
Sources: GS1 UK: the barcode turns 50; GS1: first barcode scan, 40th anniversary; History.com: first barcode scan
Last fact-checked .