Imagine the world before bar code. A2B will soon host an Open House to celebrate the 50th anniversary of bar code scanning. That milestone makes me reflect on the changes that bar code has brought. In 1961, when the first test scan occurred on a Boston & Maine railcar, computers were being used to perform rudimentary accounting and operational functions in both industry and the military. Punch cards were used to communicate between those computers and their users – a slow and expensive process. Data was key-entered, which made it highly prone to error.

One of the most acute “data entry to computer” challenges at the time was collecting data from the sides of boxcars that often traveled 60 miles per hour, at night and/or in a snowstorm. A team of clever engineers from Sylvania, headed by A2B Chairman David Collins, tackled the problem with a project called KarTrak. Their solution was to use bar codes to represent the human readable data and a Xenon white light scanner to read the data. The tests proved successful and the rest, as they say, is history. Today there are believed to be three billion bar code scans every day, and bar code is the backbone of commerce, industry and government in 150 countries.

The next time you go through a check-out lane, imagine the wait if every item had to be key-entered. Imagine not being able to track a priority package. Think of the logjam in warehouses if parts had to be hand- picked to match orders. Without bar code there would be no next day delivery, no online shopping and the food in your grocery store would be less fresh. In fact there are few processes that don’t employ bar code.

Bar codes have changed in appearance over 50 years, from the first ladder codes, to picket fence codes, to pdf codes, to two dimensional codes (sometimes called checkerboard codes). Bar code scanners have adapted, from the 100-pound iron box at the railroad trackside to the iPhone in your pocket. The job they do remains the same though, they talk to a computer without making a mistake so the computer can better serve our needs.

To view the full bar code history timeline, click here.