In a recent article, it was announced that Norman Joseph Woodland, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Woodland is one of the co-inventors of the Universal Product Code (UPC) or barcode. Although barcodes are found everywhere in today’s commercial environment, the technology struggled to gain adoption in its early years. In fact, there was a Business Week article entitled The Supermarket Scanner that Failed. The first commercial usage of barcodes occurred not in the retail sector, but in the US automotive industry.
Barcodes have been integrated into our every day life and have become a natural sight. We see them on our food, on our clothes, and just about anything else you can find in a store. It’s hard to go a day without seeing a barcode some where.
Many different systems have been based around utilizing barcodes. Systems like:
Barcodes have not remained stationary in their evolutionary path; they have evolved into interactive, 2D barcodes that anyone with a smart phone and a barcode scanner app can interact with. This allows companies to personalize each users’ marketing experience and have a greater impact on how each user perceives the marketing campaign.
Bar codes are a unique, undying invention that will likely remain in our lives for years to come.