Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Happy birthday, Barcode!

On October 20, 1949, Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed a patent application titled "Classifying Apparatus and Method." 3 years later, on October 7, 1952, U.S. Patent 2,612,994 issued. The '994 Patent protected an apparatus for classifying articles having concentric circular light-reflective outer classification lines, and inner auxiliary lines:


The inventors sought to solve a local food chain's need to design a system for reading product data automatically. It's fair to say they succeeded. Read about their story here.

And thanks Google for commemorating this technological advance!


Read more about the bar code here.

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