How the Railroad Industry Invented, Then Immediately Discarded, the Barcode

Trying to codify and organize things is really hard. Case in point: When Amazon tried to launch a cashier-free grocery store concept late last year, the company saw a lot of problems crop up when too many customers used the store at the same time. On a macro level, the railroad industry once faced similar problems with automatically tracking things—a problem it started working on 60 years ago, without the benefits of modern innovation. In fact, the industry actually  created a lot of that innovation. To put it another way: Before the barcode hit the grocery store, it hit rail cars, and not in a way you might expect.