Who Were The Fathers Of The Barcode?

The barcode may be everywhere today, but it is a relatively recent invention. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and so it was with the barcode. Overhearing a local merchant’s request for a quick-method system to read product information at the checkout counter, graduate student Bernard Silver and his friend, Norman Woodland, started working on a number of systems. Previous attempts at developing a similar system using punch cards never caught on due to the prohibitive equipment costs and the Great Depression.

Silver was so enthused by the problem, he continued pursuing it without funding. The first system he and Woodland developed used ultraviolet ink, but it proved both too expensive and untrustworthy, as the ink faded. He was then inspired by Morse code and later claimed the first barcode design he created was in the Florida sand. He simply elongated the dots and dashes of Morse code to create what would later become the barcode design.

Of course having a system to read these codes was another matter. For this Silver adapted technology used for reading the sound scores on movie film. Silver and Woodland received their first patent for the new technology in 1952. By this time they had started working at IBM whose initial evaluation of the project concluded it was feasible but needed specific technological developments before it could be commercially viable.

Early barcode scanner prototypes indicated that the technology could work. The prototype reader system was also too large to be practical and they had no easy way to make it smaller. IBM attempted to buy the patents from Silver and Woodland, but they eventually got a better offer from Philco. Before the project with Philco could go very far Bernard Silver was killed in a car crash.

Even back then the need for a barcode scanner system capable of keeping track of inventory was significant. Two prime examples were grocery stores and railroads, but as it turned out a system for tracking individual items had application in almost any industry. Work had already been done in the railroad industry on a system with the same objectives as Silver and Woodlands barcodes.

The system used for rail cars was the work of David Collins working along with the Sylvania company. Collins recognized the application of the technology to industries other than railroads, but Sylvania was not interested. Shortly thereafter Collins left Sylvania and co-founded the Computer Identics Corporation. Around the same time Philco sold the barcode patent rights to RCA.

By the late 1960s we were beginning to see the forerunners of todays “big box stores” and they needed more convenient and reliable ways to control their inventory. Manufacturing was also becoming more complex and competitive and needed more sophisticated methods of inventory and asset control.

Collins’ Computer Identics quietly installed rudimentary, hand-built barcode and scanning systems in a General Motors (GM) plant in Michigan, and the General Trading Company in New Jersey. Kroger offered to test-drive the laser-guided system RCA was developing. By the 1970s IBM became involved in barcode technology development again and put Norman Woodland in charge of their project. Barcode technology’s future had finally arrived.

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