How Did Barcodes Come Into BeingIn most businesses today which have tangible products the billing is done using a bar code, which is a bit of data that is machine readable. The whole point is that instead of manually writing out bill you use a bar code reader and zap your bill is done in less than half the time it would take you to make a manual bill. The bar code reading machine works electronically, but some barcode battery operated machines are also available. In some designs barcode battery operated machines can be recharged electronically and when the power goes, the machine switches to batter power. This is very convenient in case your experience frequent power surges and power cuts.

The first use of the barcode battery operated machine was naturally in the grocery store. The place where you have to bill many small items in every purchase made from the store. The grocery clerks would spend as much time making the bill out as they would to get all the different items demanded by the customer together. The arrival of the barcode battery operated machine simplified this billing procedure extensively. The now familiar check out lanes at your favourite grocery store or super market owes its origins to this humble machine.

So just how did these marvels of modern invention come into being? Way back in 1932 a project at Harvard University started by Wallace Flint laid the foundation to automate customer purchasing. His system of handing out cards to the customers which could be punched at the appropriate places by the serving clerks were way too complicated as compared to the barcode battery operated machines that we have today. It was also more expensive to implement as it had a considerable initial investment.

Bringing up a step closer to the barcode battery operated machines that we know so well today was Bernard Silver and his friend Norman Joseph Woodland. In 1948 they began researching for a way to read product information during check out by using ultraviolet ink. When they moved from Drexel Institute of Technology, they had learnt that ultraviolet ink fades easily and was expensive to procure for mass use. Then the actual bar code as we know it came into existence when Woodland got inspired by Morse Code and made thick and thin lines out of the dots and dashes. What we see as the label that barcode battery operated machines read today.

The pair got a patent and tried to interest IBM in the product but were unsuccessful. David Collins in 1959, took us closer to the barcode battery operated machines we use today by encoding a six digit company id and a four digit car number on the sides of train cars to be able to automatically identify them. While the railway project went bust the system was adapted by a toll bridge in New Jersery. The U.S. Post Office asked the team at Sylvania headed by Collins to develop a similar system to keep track of which truck entered the yard and when. When Collin quit Sylvania and formed Computer Identics he began to experiment with helium neon lasers which was first installed at a General Motors factory.