Barcode Inventor: How barcode changed the world of retail, know when innovation happened

HIGHLIGHTS: We go to the billing counter and pay the prescribed bill by scanning the barcode on the product.

Whenever we go to a store or mall, buy something, take it to the billing counter and pay the prescribed bill by scanning the barcode on the product. On Tuesday, engineer and scientist George Laurer died in North Carolina at the age of 94. He was the co-developer of this Universal Product Code (UPC) or barcode in 1973. It was an invention that completely changed the way businesses work.

Before the barcode invention

Prior to this invention, the owners of the store used to give employees the label of every product. Laurer told the Washington Post in an interview in 2010 that prices were skyrocketing during the 1970s and that there was a need to impose a price tag on all products in stores. Then Laurer, along with Norman Joseph Woodland, invented the barcode. Woodland died in 2012.

How did the idea of ​​barcode develop?

The barcode was Woodland's brainchild, which is credited to Laurer for successfully developing it. During the 1950s Woodland thought of building a system based on barcode symbology so that the product and its price could be read by a machine. This was called the Bulls-Eye barcode. In the beginning, Woodland drew inspiration from Morse Code, two of which were a famous character-encoded scheme. It used to work in telecom.

The idea of ​​Woodland was good but he could not develop it because in the 1950s the cost of laser and computing technology was very high. Laurer developed it two decades later in the 1970s. At that time he was working with IBM.

Laurer used a rectangular system because the Bull's-Eye had concentric circles that complicated it. He developed the scanner with a strip. The first barcode transaction took place on a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum from Wrigley.

After the barcode invention

After so many years, barcodes have changed the way the retail industry works around the world. Barcodes are used in thousands of products and are very convenient. This makes billing easier and there is less scope for mistake. Owners of retail stores are able to track their goods better.

After the introduction of barcodes, the business of large retailers has increased during the 1970s and 1980s. On the 25th anniversary of the barcode invention, Laurer told in an interview that whenever he sees the code of the goods being scanned, he is not sure that it is working so well.

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