Happy birthday, bar code!

GLOBAL: Bar codes are so common that, today, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time before they existed. The 35-year-old invention was first used on 26 June 1974 to read the price on a package of chewing gum.

“It was cheap and it was needed,” says 84-year-old George J. Laurer, the former IBMengineer  who led the development of the bar code. “And it is reliable. Those three things probably contributed more than anything else,” Laurer told The New York Times.

"It was cheap and it was needed," says 84-year-old George Laurer.

Laurer’s team began working on the bar code in 1970. In 1972, they presented a design to a committee of reviewers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The committee agreed with the design, but recommended changing the “human readables” — the numbers below the bar code. The reviewers wanted the font changed to one that was expected to become readable by machines and that would thus replace the striped bar code pattern.

“They were absolutely sure that, within a few years, no one would be reading the bar code,” Laurer said. “Well, they were wrong.”

Interestingly, neither IBM nor the developers patented the bar code, Laurer says. Manufacturers pay a small yearly fee to GS1 , a non-profit organization that monitors international standards. GSI has offices in 108 countries and employs over 2,000 people.