{
  "id": 13812442,
  "title": "A Short History of the Barcode",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/11/a-short-history-of-the-barcode",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-11T21:44:58.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "HackerNoon",
    "slug": "hackernoon",
    "url": "https://hackernoon.com/a-short-history-of-the-barcode?source=rss"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In 1948, a supermarket executive named Sam Friedland visited Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia seeking assistance from the dean to develop a new machine-readable encoding system for products. The dean declined, citing the project as outside their curriculum. Undeterred, Friedland approached two students, Bernard Silver and Joseph Woodland, who began working on a solution over the next few months.\n\nInitially, their prototype utilized special ink that glowed under ultraviolet light, but this proved too costly and challenging to print. However, Woodland remained committed to the project. In late 1948, he decided to dedicate himself to the endeavor, leaving his studies in Miami Beach. During this time, a breakthrough moment occurred while Woodland was drawing in the sand. He noticed that lines connecting dots and dashes resembled Morse code symbols, and he extended these visual representations downward, forming uneven lines and spaces.\n\nWoodland's innovation encoded information spatially, unlike Morse code's temporal encoding based on signal duration and spacing. The resulting prototype, dubbed the \"bar code,\" consisted of a rectangular pattern of parallel lines and blank spaces that represented a product identifier. An optical scanner would then convert the bar code's light reflections into electrical signals, allowing machines to read and process the encoded data at checkout. This revolutionary system aimed to eliminate manual price labels and streamlining cashier operations.\n\nAlthough the first prototypes faced challenges, the concept of using bar codes for product identification eventually gained traction. The barcode system offered numerous benefits, such as reduced labor costs, improved inventory management, real-time sales data for pricing and stocking decisions, and enhanced customer satisfaction by expediting the checkout process. Over time, the barcode evolved and became a ubiquitous symbol in retail, transforming the way products are identified and processed in stores.",
  "summary": "How Morse code inspired the barcode, why early prototypes failed, and how an IBM engineer created the rectangular barcode used on billions of products today.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}