Bar Code, Retailing Innovation, Product Of IBM And RTP

On June 26, 1974, a scanner at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio scanned a pack of chewing gum. It was the first product to be checked out by Universal Product Code, an invention largely credited to Research Triangle Park scientist George Laurer. The first barcodes were developed by New Jersey engineer N. Joseph Woodland in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but the technology wasn’t brought into use largely because the scanners needed to put checkout systems into place were too expensive to produce.