They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and so it was with the barcode. Overhearing a local merchant's request for a quick-method system to read product information at the checkout counter, graduate student Bernard Silver and his friend, Norman Woodland, started working on a number of systems. Silver was likely unaware that another inventor had developed a system using punch cards back in the 1930s. That system never caught on due to the prohibitive equipment costs and the Great Depression.
Silver was so encouraged by the problem, he continued pursuing it without funding. 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. 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 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 too large, and the technology for reducing either was unavailable in the 1950s. While IBM offered to purchase the patent for far less than it was worth, Silver and Woodland persevered. In 1962, Philco bought them, but sadly, Bernard Silver died in a car crash the following year.
Meanwhile the grocery stores were trying to maintain the right amount of inventory, railroads were just trying to keep track of their many cars. The railroad industry, still very strong in those days, adopted a system similar to the barcode, developed by David Collins and promulgated by Sylvania. Collins tried to interest Sylvania in a smaller version of the system which could be used on anything, but Sylvania turned him down, so he quit and co-founded the Computer Identics Corporation. Meanwhile, Philco sold the barcode patent rights to RCA.
Development began in earnest in the late 1960s, as the grocery industry now demanded such technology. Collins' Computer Identics quietly installed rudimentary, hand-built barcode and scanning systems in a General Motors (GM) plant in Michigan, and the General Trading Company in New Jersey. 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. The rest, they say, is history.
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