Worldwide Impact

Mar 30

The bar code was developed by two Drexel University engineers in West Philadelphia

*Barcode sample courtesy of International Barcodes, Ltd.*

Today, most people probably know that ENIAC – the world’s first general purpose computer – was invented at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia. (ENIAC stands for: Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.)

But few realize that the ubiquitous bar code we see all around us today was invented just blocks away from ENIAC by two Drexel University students.

This means two of the most important and far-reaching inventions of the 20th century took place in West Philadelphia.

In fact, author and commentator Arthur Goldstruck once called the barcode “arguably the most successful consumer technology ever rolled out.”

It’s on everything from baby tags and
boarding passes to runway models and ships

Developed by fellow graduate students Bernard “Bob” Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland at the school then known as Drexel Institute of Technology, the patented idea eventually led to the Universal Product Code (UPC) you find just about everywhere today.

You see barcodes on items ranging from infant I.D. tags and blood bags in hospitals … to tags on logs, bees, ships at West Point and fashion models on the runway … to millions of packages delivered to our homes every single day.

Along the way, the barcode went from
a “bulls-eye” shape to a square or rectangle

In some places today, it’s been superseded by RFID (radio frequency Identification codes) or QR (2-dimensional quick response codes). But in 2022, the bar code still affects our lives in huge ways. And it’s scanned and tracked billions of times a day.

Birth of the barcode

In 1948, Samuel Friedland, the president of Food Fair, a Philadelphia grocery chain, asked a dean at Drexel University to help him find a way to automate the checkout process and track inventory. The dean’s basic reply: It wasn’t part of the school’s mission.

But Bernard “Bob” Silver, an electrical engineering grad student and instructor at Drexel, overhead the conversation. He then spoke with Norman Joseph Woodland, a fellow instructor with a degree in mechanical engineering. The two decided to solve the problem. And together they made history.

A day at the beach

To clear his mind and help find a way to automate checkout, Woodland quit his job at Drexel and traveled to his grandfather’s apartment in Miami Beach to think about the problem. Here’s what he told Fortune Magazine happened next:

“I took a beach chair down to the beach and sat down. And I’m thinking, How the hell am I going to pull this off? I was just thinking to myself, What do I need? Well, the first thing I need is some sort of a code. And the only code I knew of was Morse code. You know, I had to learn that in the Boy Scouts when I was a youngster. And I was thinking” — Woodland starts singing — “ ‘dit-dit-dit, daaah-daaah-daaah, dit-dit-dit.’ Remember what that is? That’s SOS. Dit-dit-dit was ‘S.’ I stuck my four fingers down into the sand and for whatever reason I pulled them to myself. And I looked, and I had made four furrows. And I said, Wow! I can have encodation in the form of lines! I could have wide lines and narrow lines! Right? And that was the invention of the bar code, right then and there. That was it!”

An idea way ahead of its time

In 1949, Silver and Woodland applied for a patent on their “Classifying Apparatus and Method,” which included a “bulls-eye” barcode.” They received a patent in 1952.

Unfortunately, their initial efforts required a 500-watt bulb and a reader the size of a table. It wasn’t until powerful lasers and integrated circuits came into being that scanners became simple and affordable enough to make the barcode practical. By that time, their patent had expired.

Interesting Oddities:

Silver and Woodland sold their patent to Philco for $15,000 in 1962. Sarah Laskow of The Atlantic estimates this value in 2014 dollars as $115,000. Philco sold the “bulls-eye” patent to RCA in 1971, says Digimark, and began testing it in Kroger stores. Smeared ink during printing created some problems.
Silver died of leukemia in 1963. Woodland went to work for IBM in 1951, staying there until he retired in 1987. Both are in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Woodland joined an IBM barcode team competing against RCA and five other companies to develop a Universal Product Code. IBM’s George Laurer developed the rectangular version we see today. His version solved the smeared ink problem, and it was accepted by the grocery trade industry group on April 3, 1973. The first package scanned with a UPC code was a 10-pack of Wrigley Juicy Fruit gum June 26, 1974 at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Twenty-six years after a Food Fair president asked a dean at Drexel for help, businesses all over the world finally had an easy way to track purchases and inventory … thanks to two West Philadelphia inventors.

FAST FACTS

Co-Inventors: Bernard “Bob” Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland

Invention: First optically scanned barcode and barcode reader

U.S. Patent #: 2,612,994

Year Patented: 1952

Year Universal Product Code First Used in a Store: 1974

Some Sources:

https://bar-code.com/upc/bar-code-history/

https://drexel.edu/engineering/news-events/news/archive/2012/December/normanjosephwoodlandcoinventorofthebarcodepassesawayat91/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-bar-code-round-114500504.html