History of Barcodes
|
|
| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Engineering Computer Science Electrical Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation History of Science and Technology Information Systems Information Technology |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - General |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Organization:barcode.com |
| Description: | History of Barcodes from barcode.com. Excerpt: "Before barcodes were ever dreamed up, grocers often discussed how they needed some way to track their merchandise. It was not until 1948 when Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel overheard a conversation amongst the dean and the president of a large food chain. While the dean turned down the president’s request for a graduate student project involving automated check-out, Silver mentioned the conversation to his friend, Norman Woodland. Fascinated, Woodland immediately started to think up solutions. After some trials and errors, Woodland came up with a linear barcode that took elements from movie soundtracks and the Morse code. Together, Woodland and Silver continued to develop various barcodes and filed a joint patent on October 20, 1949. The patent was granted three years later, but they still needed to find a device that could read the barcodes. Realizing that they were a bit ahead of their time, Woodland and Silver tried to sell their patent to Woodland’s employer, IBM, but eventually sold it to Philco in 1962, whom then sold it to RCA in 1971. 23 years had passed, yet there were still no signs of barcodes. It wasn’t until David Collins came along and developed his own company, Computer Identics. Using things he had learned while developing a barcode-like system for railroads, Collins began using lasers, allowing for a laser beam to be absorbed by thin black stripes and reflected by the white spaces. Computer Identics slowly began implementing its system in General Motors and General Trading Company. While these systems proved effective, each barcode only contained two digits, as there was limited inventory at both companies." |
| Rating: | No Rating |
| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | bar code UPC |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | October 2009 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://blog.barcoding.com/2009/01/history-of-barcodes/ |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
|
