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Packaging touches everyone every day.
This is the Everything Packaging podcast with David Holliday.
What’s up with packaging? Well, today is actually a huge packaging related day.
Not only is today, June 26 national barcode day, it is also the 50th anniversary of the day the first barcode was scanned in a retail store as a live transaction.
Yes, on June 26 1974 in a Marshes supermarket in Troy Ohio, a UPC barcode was scanned on the most unglamorous product imaginable, a packet of wrigley's chewing gum.
From this start, a revolution in how products were identified and managed began.
That barcode scanned in 1974 was the result of the retail industry looking for way to speed up checkout in stores, while improving accuracy. Stores at that time, relied on cashiers typing product and price info for every single transaction.
Various barcode types had been considered and tested, since the first patent was issued to Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952. They also designed and patented a rudimentary barcode scanner device.
Woodland and Silver’s barcode was a bullseye shape, which had the advantage of being scannable from any angle. However, it was large and proved difficult to print in practice.
The barcode system that was eventually chosen was developed by IBM and consisted of vertical bars of different spacing and thicknesses – yes, the beginning of the familiar UPC code.
The introduction of the UPC code was greatly aided by another technology that was growing at that time lasers.
Laser technology enabled the development of barcode readers that could quickly and accurately scan the barcode printed on labels and packaging.
it still wasn’t easy for the new UPC code to be universally adopted by the industry. A committee set up by the retail industry was given the task of choosing a symbology and a product numbering scheme, and until the very end, the bull’s-eye type barcode had been the favorite to win.
Some people even thought the lines and numbers in the barcode represented the "mark of the beast" from the biblical Book of Revelation – there was also pushback from people who were convinced the whole barcode idea was a scam to make people pay more at the checkout.
As we know the current UPC barcode won out in the end and the UPC code with it’s encoded Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is now seen on just about every item sold at retail, all over the world, all based on the specifications set by the standards organization GS1.
As well as being scanned at checkout, the GTIN data plays a huge role in logistics, e-commerce, inventory control and much much more.
While the barcode and the actual encoded data hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years – additional digits have been added to the encoded numbers from time to time – a major barcode revolution is coming up.
The standards organization GS1 is launching a migration to 2D barcodes such as Datamatrix and QR Code that will enable more information to be encoded.
While the GTIN will remain the cornerstone of the GS1 system, retail barcodes will now be able to contain expiration dates (allowing a warning at checkout if an item has expired), lot numbers (warning if the product is part of a batch has been recalled), and serial numbers that will allow complete traceability.
In addition a new standard, GS1 Digital Link, allows a URL to be encoded in the barcode, providing access to much more information for the consumer and replacing the need to have multiple barcodes on a package.
Even with all this, the familiar UPC barcode isn’t going away.
For brands that don’t need any of the features 2D barcodes offer, the option to continue with their existing UPC code remains in place.
So happy National Barcode Day and happy 50th birthday to the UPC Code – a lot has been achieved in the last 50 years and we are just getting started!
I hope you enjoyed this latest Whats Up with packaging. They’ll be another episode in the very near future so watch out for that. Thank you so much and here’s to the next 50 years!