How the Barcode Scanner System Was Invented

Posted on January 29, 2010
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Barcodes are everywhere today, but it hasn’t actually been that way for very long. Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland started working on the idea in the late 1940s. Previous attempts at developing a similar system using punch cards never caught on due to the prohibitive equipment costs and the Great Depression.

Silver had a fairly clear idea of what needed to be done and he was obsessed enough to use his own money to find a system that worked. 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.

He then used technology developed for movie soundtracks to read it, but was moved to change the box design to a bullseye so it could be read in any direction. In 1949, the pair applied for a patent they received 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.

It didn’t help that the prototype barcode scanner reading device set the paper ablaze either, but it did work. Still, IBM’s report proved accurate, as the 500-watt incandescent bulb was simply too much. The prototype was simply too large, and the technology for reducing it in size was unavailable in the 1950s. IBM attempted to buy the patents from Silver and Woodland, but they eventually got a better offer from Philco. Unfortunately Bernard Silver died in a car crash the following year.

Meanwhile it was becoming clear that barcode scanning technology could be used by grocery stores who were trying to maintain the right amount of inventory, and railroads struggling to keep track of their many cars. The railroad industry, still very strong in those days, adopted a system similar to the barcode

The system used for rail cars was the work of David Collins working along with the Sylvania company. Collins tried to interest Sylvania in a smaller version of the system which could be used on anything, but Sylvania turned him down. 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 companies also needed this type of technology.

The first installations made by Computer Identics were relatively crude systems placed in a Michigan General Motors plant and a warehouse in New Jersey owned by the General Trading Company. Meanwhile at RCA they were working on a laser-guided barcode system which was first installed at Kroger for testing. By the 1970s IBM became involved in barcode technology development again and put Norman Woodland in charge of their project. The rest, they say, is history.

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