1952 10 10. On October 7th, norman woodland and Bernard Silver, who were students in the Department of Technology of drexel University in Philadelphia, USA, obtained the original bar code patent. At that time, the bar code was not the same as it is now. Instead, it was composed of a group of concentric circles, which was read by a photo scanner.
By the end of 1960s, bar code readers began to connect with computers. The system has been gradually extended and applied in various fields, such as file management in military organs, libraries and blood banks. The Universal Product Code (UPC) issued by 1973 has become the standard for commodity identification. 1977, the European Commodity Coding International Organization (EAM) was established, which is undertaking the task of establishing international product coding standards. Nowadays, the bar code system has been applied in more than 100 countries, and the first laser bar code scanning system in history was born in 1978. What exactly is a bar code? It is a system that stores data and can process data accurately and quickly. Barcodes provide coded text information in a simple way, which is then read by electronic scanners. It consists of a set of parallel lines spaced apart and used to store coded information.
The biggest advantage of bar code technology is that it saves time, and it is organized and accurate. Barcoding products is to classify them. Therefore, the bar code system is used in supermarkets, department stores, clothing stores, pharmacies, bookstores, toy stores and other places.
In fact, the most important bar code system is not those striking small lines, but the following numbers. All information is stored in this column of numbers, which show the characteristics of the product and the database. Therefore, this system is a very effective business tool. At present, there are other identification systems, but no effective standard can be widely used like bar code.