Fig.: GS1
GS1 Switzerland is celebrating 50 years of the barcode these days – the barcode that ensures the unique identification of articles and goods worldwide in logistics and has opened the door to an incredible variety of further developments. Joachim Heldt, editor-in-chief of «GS1 network», on this identification hit.
“Actually,” he says, “it’s just a few black lines.” But what appears so inconspicuous has brought the global economy to a new level.
"Without the barcode, global trade as we know it would be unthinkable. Its secret: The barcode converts the numerical sequence of the product code into an optoelectronically readable form. This allows a scanner to transmit the code to databases and make the information it contains digitally available.".
(…) The invention dates back to the Americans Bernard Silver and Joseph Woodland. Based on Morse code, they developed the first barcode, for which they received a patent in 1952. However, the invention failed to gain widespread acceptance in the retail sector. On April 3, 1973, the global players in the food, retail, and consumer goods sectors decided to introduce a Universal Product Code, or UPC for short. This marked the birth of the barcode.
Premiere in Ohio:
In the end, it was the US retail giant Walmart, at whose urging US retailers adopted the UPC nationwide. On June 26, 1974, a package of Wrigley's chewing gum "Juicy Fruit" was scanned for the first time in a supermarket in the US state of Ohio, using a UPC barcode.
It took another three years for the innovation to reach Europe. The EAN code was introduced in Europe in 1976. The following year, the European Article Numbering Association (EAN), consisting of 12 member organizations, was founded. Switzerland was one of the 12 founding countries. Since 2005, the European Article Numbering Association has operated worldwide under the name GS1, and its standards are recognized globally.
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