Featured in many sci-fi stories as a quicker, more efficient way to record and transfer information, barcodes are both extremely commonplace today, and still amazingly poorly understood by many. Originally designed as a way to allow for increased automation by allowing computer systems to scan a code with information about the item it labels, its potential as an information carrier is becoming ever more popular.
Without the tagging ability of barcodes (and their close cousin: RFID tags), much of today’s modern world would grind to a halt. The automated sorting and delivery systems for mail and parcels, entire inventory management systems, the tracing of critical avionics and rocketry components around the globe, as well as seemingly mundane but widely utilized rapid checkout at the supermarket, all depends on some variety of barcodes.
Join me on a trip through the past, present and future of the humble barcode.
Removing the Human Element
KarTrak barcode on the side of a rail car.
Way back in the 1930s, John Kermode, Douglas Young, and Harry Sparkes of Westinghouse Electric Co were listed as the inventors of an automated card sorter system. This system used a number of bars printed on paper, which would be read by a photo-electric cell, in turn triggering the card (statement, invoice, etc.) to be dropped through a specific trap door, sorting the item into the appropriate bin.
With the goal of the system was to speed up mundane tasks and to reduce the burden of having humans keep track of things like railcars, mail trucks, and other elements in the ever-increasing web of logistics that began to span the USA in the 20th century, barcode revolution welcome automated world
