The barcode is more than 75 years old. It began as an idea for speeding up supermarket checkouts, became the backbone of global trade, and is now evolving into 2D codes and RFID. Here is how it happened.
Timeline of barcode evolution
Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland, students at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, work on a way to read product information automatically at the checkout. Woodland's idea, inspired by Morse code, is to extend dots and dashes into thin and thick lines. They file a patent in 1949 for a circular "bullseye" code.
The patent for the bullseye "classifying apparatus and method" is granted. The technology to print and read it reliably does not exist yet.
Railways in North America try coloured barcode labels (KarTrak) on wagons - an early large-scale automatic identification system, later abandoned because the labels got dirty.
The US grocery industry chooses the UPC (Universal Product Code), a rectangular barcode designed by a team at IBM including George Laurer.
On 26 June 1974, a pack of chewing gum is scanned at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio - the first retail product sold with a UPC scan. The same year, Code 39 appears - the first alphanumeric barcode, widely adopted in industry and defence.
Europe launches the 13-digit EAN system, compatible with UPC. EAN-13 becomes the retail barcode for most of the world, including India.
Code 128 is introduced - compact, alphanumeric and still the most-used barcode for logistics and shipping labels.
2D barcodes arrive: stacked codes such as PDF417 (1991) and matrix codes such as Data Matrix, able to hold much more data in a small space.
Denso Wave in Japan creates the QR code to track automotive parts. Its fast, omnidirectional reading later makes it the code of the smartphone era.
GS1 India (then EAN India) is set up under the Ministry of Commerce, bringing global barcode numbering to Indian manufacturers and exporters.
Mindware starts in New Delhi, supplying barcode labels, printers and scanners - the business that grew into Indian Barcode and Indian RFID.
EAN International and the Uniform Code Council come together under one global name: GS1, managing barcode standards in more than 100 countries.
Smartphones make QR codes part of daily life; in India, QR-based UPI payments make QR codes familiar to almost everyone. GS1 DataBar and Data Matrix spread in fresh food and healthcare.
GS1 Digital Link lets one QR code carry a standard product number and a web link. The retail industry's "Sunrise 2027" goal is for checkouts to accept 2D barcodes alongside traditional 1D barcodes.
What changed - and what did not
Barcode symbols evolved from linear bars to dense 2D grids. Printers moved from impact and laser printing to fast thermal printing on rolls. Scanners moved from fixed lasers to camera-based imagers and phones. But the core idea never changed: give every item a unique number that a machine can read instantly.
The next step: RFID
A barcode must be seen to be read - one at a time, in line of sight. RFID removes that limit: tags are read by radio, many at once, through cartons. It is not a replacement for barcodes but the next layer on top of them. Read from barcode to RFID to see how the two work together.