Inventing the Barcode System
The barcode may be everywhere today, but it is a relatively recent invention. Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland started working on the idea in the late 1940s. Silver was likely unaware that another inventor had developed a system using punch cards back in the 1930s.
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. Initial attempts used ultraviolet ink but the ink faded too quickly and the process was too expensive. He later claimed that Morse code gave him the inspiration that led to his first successful barcode design. He took the Morse code dots and dashes and put them in rows.
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. Silver and Woodland received their first patent for the new technology in 1952. Silver started working for IBM in 1951, who was, ironically, deeply involved in punch-card technology. Silver tried to interest the corporate giant in his project, and IBM actually commissioned a report which indicated the idea was feasible, but involved technology that was simply unavailable at the time.
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 reader system was also too large to be practical and they had no easy way to make it smaller. While IBM offered to purchase the patent for far less than it was worth, Silver and Woodland persevered. In 1962, Philco bought the patents. Unfortunately Bernard Silver died in a car crash the following year.
Even back then the need for a barcode scanner system capable of keeping track of inventory was significant. Two prime examples were grocery stores and railroads, but as it turned out a system for tracking individual items had application in almost any industry. 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. As a result Collins left his arrangement with Sylvania and created his own company called Computer Identics Corporation. Around the same time Philco sold the barcode patent rights to RCA.
Development began in earnest in the late 1960s, as the grocery industry now demanded such technology. Manufacturing was also becoming more complex and competitive and needed more sophisticated methods of inventory and asset control.
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. Kroger offered to test-drive the laser-guided system RCA was developing. In the 1970s, RCA’s limited success with its bullseye barcode attracted the attention of, you guessed it, IBM, who tapped staffer, Norman Woodland himself, to handle the project. Barcode technology’s future had finally arrived.
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