The 35th Anniversary of the Bar Code

Wednesday marks the 35th anniversary of the Universal Product Code (UPC).
To celebrate the milestone, GS1 (Formerly the Uniform Code Council or UCC) the administrator of the bar code is holding and annual U Connect Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The worldwide UPC symbol, now appears on over 200,000 businesses in the United States alone. It's black and white stripped machine readable bars have conveyed and identified specific product information for over three decades in counting.

In the beginning, the initial objectives for the UPC were plain and simple. There was a strong need to speed up the grocery checkout line and effortlessly track stock. A time of technologic boom was in effect. And what better company to take initiative with developing a pattern then Internation Business Machines Corportation (IBM). IBM put their top engineer Mr. George J. Laurer to the task and in 1973, the birth of the Universal Product Code (UPC) came to flourish.

In June of 1974, the first UPC Scanner was installed in Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio and a pack of Wrigleys Gum's bar code was scanned.


The process of the UPC has not varied much in it's 35 years of history. We still use the same standards as we did back during it's birth. The Universal Product Code can still be purchased through GS1 US (formerally the Uniform Code Council) or you can buy a barcode through other resellers like Quality UPC.

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