It's too bad that the video didn't explain anything about how the barcode works or how they got a 1D barcode to be read in any direction. "Reconfigured the laser" doesn't explain anything. That it can be big or small doesn't explain anything. It's never mentioned that nation wide databases and standard codes had to be created so that the same product is uniquely identified anywhere and no two products in the same industry have the same code. The video boils down to just: Someone had an idea about a magic code, a brighter light was needed, microchips were needed, the shape changed, then it became really popular, then more shapes were created to store more info. There isn't much that the viewer learns that they couldn't have guessed.

I was a teenage grocery stockboy back in the 1960's and I can tell you, a grocer had to be a genius to keep up with inventory, you had to keep up with the replacement of inventory as items were sold and there were hundreds and hundreds of different items. Constantly, you either ordered too much or you were out of something else. While I wouldn't call it a nightmare, we found ways to get it done, today's people have no idea the mental powers it used to take to run a grocery store. The checkout girls were masters of memory and efficiency, too

My grandpa made the computer program that read the vertical barcode,, however he didn't work for IBM. He worked for the ARCO plutonium storage facility in Washington state. IBM wasn't alone in coming up with that "barcode", they picked up technology that ARCO was working on in 1971-73 to organize plutonium storage

In my middle school, I helped the librarian put barcodes on every book and enter them into the library database. The PC was a Leading Edge 8086 with a whopping 384 kb of ram, a 20 mb hard drive, and one of those yellow monochrome monitors. This eliminated those little checkout cards that were glued inside the book covers.

As a long time retail vet, everything from cashier to frieght manager, bar codes are an incredible time saver. They have been ubiquitous during my lifetime but I cant imagine how much more time it would have taken to keep accurate inventory alone in addition to cashier speed and accuracy of individual entries. Neat little documentary! Thanks!

This video had a lot of "fluff" in it. Not many details, probably could've finished the video in 3 mins

The older I get, the more I wish I could go back to the days when things were slower and more personal. I know it's all rose-coloured glasses, and the "good ol' days" weren't that good, but I hate when speed and efficiency are prised above all else. It feels like humanity gets lost in the race to go ever farther and faster.

0:42 _"…he often sat on the oceanfront…"_ This is one of those perfect examples that it is ok to be "bored", and just sit while doint nothing… It seems that nowadays, we don't allow boredom, and grab our smartphones to start scrolling through the socials or just play some game. While it is in those moments that our thoughts take over and come up with all sorts of things.

I remember in the 60s that the grocery checker had to not only punch in the price but also the department in the store selling it. The largest department key on the keyboard was “Grocery.” The lazier checkers would often use that key for everything. Thus merchandise sold from the meat department would be credited to the grocery department. It was a real headache.

I seem to remember learning about a barcode sorting system used by railroads as far back as the 1950's. The code card was on the side of the car and it was scanned by stationary television camera as the car passed by.

22:04 the picture kind of suggest that QR codes are from 2020, when in fact they are from 1994.. I have used them for more than a decade and in Japan they have apparently used them for decades

Curiosity Stream being promoted everywhere. Glad I found out how shallow it really is without giving my card info!!

I had a neighbor who was a bit excentric. Prior to the bar code coming to our rural area all items had a priced affixed to each item. When an item changed price all existing inventory (of that item) had to be restamped with the higher price. My neighbor would dig toward the back of a shelf as there might be an item that didn't get repriced with a new pricing sticker. He said he was successful more often than not in getting a bit lower priced item, usually canned goods.

As a former cashier in the old days I took pride in accurately and quickly entering prices into my register. Barcodes still make errors at times, but significantly fewer than hand entered. Plus the fact that the receipt tells you what you bought, rather than just being a string of numbers. Fun fact: I remember when Mad Magazine came with its first bar coded volume. It was on the front cover with an arrow pointing to it and the caption “the world’s first computer-generated joke.” (If memory serves). Guess they thought it would be a fad.

The white is the data, the black separates each number. I wrote software for a manufacture that had to print UPC numbers on their price tags in the early 90s.

1 D bar codes can certainly carry alpha as well as numeric characters. This video is great, but it seems very UPC oriented. The largest user of bar coding is the US military. That said, I think a bit of how UPC codes work would have been appropriate. The first part of each UPC symbol identifies a manufacturer, and the second half is a product number for that manufacturer's item. A worldwide organization (UCC) handles the assignment of manufacturer's ID numbers. I've been in the bar code industry for almost 50 years. I'd be glad to answer any questions!

A related and interesting story is that of Jerome Schwartz and Symbol Technologies of Long Island, New York. Symbol developed rugged barcode laser scanners for retail and industrial applications. Toys R Us and United Parcel Service (UPS) were early adopters of Symbol’s innovative hand held scanners and portable/mobile data terminals.

I guess this makes it easier for us to check out our own groceries now

What a wonderful video... This is something I have always wondered, you could say I was, "curious," about barcodes, and now I know the origins (Physically I got how they worked, and how QR codes evolved from them). Great video. Liked, subscribed.

1974 paying 67¢ for gum would have been insane. Something is off here. Maybe it was a giant pack of gum. A small pack of gum like that pictured retailed for a quarter well into the 90s.

My dad implemented this code system at Grumman for inventory control in the cutting tools department. He would make all our birthday cards in barcode 😅

The humble barcode revolutionized the entire planet!

I remember as a kid watching the checkers at the grocery store with the old style cash registers. Some of them could really fly over the keys, but even the fastest weren't as fast as the scanners. A lot of checkers didn't like the bar codes at first though. Being able to quickly enter prices was a skill people that were good at it were proud of. But it's a hard to argue with the advantages of the technology.

It did eventually start making my life easier letting me shop with more independence. 😎 I do remember working as a cashier without it being in use for several years though,even when many items had them printed on. The first happy use of it I got with my personal cinder block sized scanner, suddenly being able to scan my cassette tapes and several record albums. Saved my hands from making so many, braille labels, with a slate and stylus, on dymo tape. 😊

16:14 "It always blows my mind barcodes are scanned 6 billion times a day". I find this fact to probably be a very low estimate because my wife alone buys 1 billion new items a day.

Great video... So interesting. Easily overlooked yet critical technology.

Informative and interesting watching thanks

Amazing and well researched docuementary and greatly informative. The most Amazing part you never mentioned at all the consultative firm McKinsey and Associates. The Firm seems to boast that they created the bar code. But your docuementary gives the credit to not only the engineers but two opposing firms namely RCA and IBM to have started this modern convenience which has made our modern world today weather in commerce or retail.

This is a lot like Leonardo da Vinci inventing the helicopter. The inventor/invention had to wait for the technology to catch up with it. It's crazy to think that this guy invented something that would not be practical to use for at least another 20 years.

I remember when they started scanning barcodes at the Holiday Mart in Honolulu some 50 years ago. The prices were wrong and you constantly had to alert the cashier to make sure you weren't overcharged.

Think of a bar code as working like a car's license plate. It references a database. A cop can use your plate to get your name, address VIN, etc. A 1D bar code works the same way. A UPC code has a manufacturer's ID on the left side, and a product code assigned by the manufacturer in the right side. There is no price information. On scanning the numbers, the computer sytem looks up, say Frito Lay, and the code for 12oz bag of Doritos ranch chips, and returns the seller's price. 2D codes can do the same, but were developed to actually contain data in the cide itself. An early 2D code was called PDF code, for Portable Data File. QR codes are similar, but designed to hold website URL's for Quick Response to web references.

Are you sure a pack of gum is 67 cents in 1974? I am 61 years old and I am certain you have wildly overstated that number.

Big Box stores really were the death knell for department stores. They offer many of the same product categories, but in an even more convenient manner and the only two things they don't offer (large furniture and appliances) can be found in other stores, where it is more appropriate to go for a larger selection anyway. It used to be that big box stores just didn't have the same selections of things like clothing and kitchen or housewares and were still more focused on the grocery section, but that hasn't been the case since the late 90's. Nowadays, you're lucky if your big box store still has a quarter of the store devoted to grocery. Not that the selection has diminished, but that the size of modern big box stores has really ballooned over the years into truly gargantuan proportions. And, unfortunately, department stores just can't compete with that convenience or the broader selection of more specialized stores. Particularly when most developers go to the trouble of soliciting companies with offerings that fill in the gaps of their anchor stores to rent store fronts in their shopping centers for more comprehensive offerings. My local shopping center has a Target as the anchor store, a BJ's for bulk purchases, a Michaels for arts and crafts specialization, a Kohl's for clothing specialization, a Dick's Sporting Goods for sports specialization, a Rack Room Shoes for footwear specialization, and a Best Buy for electronics and appliance specialization. The developers really did try their best to make it a one-stop shopping location, despite the fact that the need for substantial parking means that you still need to drive around the shopping center unless you want to be very tired from walking.

I live over in windsor and I would love to see you do a video on the E.C. Row Expressway in Windsor. It's a short expressway we have that is very unique cause it goes from one side of the city to the other but dosent really connect to anything.

We need a movie about this, asap!

12:48 OHIO!!! ... But did you say Marsh? Lol. Nice, haven't heard that grocery store name in forever!

Good topic

Absolutely awesome documentary. I loved every minute of it.

So glad we adopted Yoopsie. She's been a big help.

Strangely enough you probably know more Morse code than you realize. 1} S ... 2}O. - - - 3} V. ...- Morse was a fan of music; that's the first 4 notes of Beethoven's Fifth symphony Roman numeral 5 is V 4}Q. - - .- the horn signal trains make before they cross over a level crossing street

I'm fascinated that the pair applied for a pa-unt at 5:05. Most inventors prefer patents.

Barcode itself is not so innovative, but the system that reads barcode is more interesting. I am impressed by the machine that reads those data with accuracy, which has actually revolutionised the world.

Could it be that bar codes could be the segway into image identification? I have seen stores that can cash you out based on what you put on a table or hold in your hand. ( Circle K gas station IE )

I didn't hear anything about rtp in nc research triangle park

"Whosoever wants to buy & sell ought to be marked with the barcode number bumper of the beast" & such ....

THE DESCENDENTS OF ONE OF THESE GUYS HAS A RIDICULOUS MANSION LIKE 10 MINUTES FROM MY HOUSE

What a genius!

11:20 so that's why it's called "a pitch"

Interesting that you completely missed speaking about the micr magnetic ink in the banking industry.

14:03 new? I mean Walmart and Target are essentially department stores. Just like Sears and Macy's. Just with groceries as one of the departments.

Philo Farnsworth, a farm boy, developed the idea of raster-scan (the basis of 2-d visual display) from his experience in considering how cornfields were laid out and operated. RCA stole the idea and it took Farnsworth many years of litigation to receive the recognized as the real inventor of television. Television defines an image from a serial input. Bar-coding did the reverse. The idea of using visual patterns to represent specific information came from R-R conductors who punched specific codes into each ticket that identified the attributes of the person who bought the ticket. And idea became the basis of the 1890 census and gave IBM its start.

4:50 Maybe that's the reason mall "Target" is named "Target"

bullseye barcode gang forever

"I don't think we'll have a ... barcode symbol that will last 40 years." Ok but QR codes can uniquely identify every particle in the observable universe with a sparse spacing for security. You can change the symbol but it won't be to identify more items or make private keys less guessable.

Born 1951, so we did inventory the old way!

Check out the 1979 album cover of "Duty Now for the Future" by DEVO. The spud-boys had some opinions on the then-new UPC codes on their product... 😉

Fun fact: Walmart, Target, K-Mart, and Kohl's were all founded in 1962

Uh, everything I'm finding lists a BERNARD Silver, not BOB Silver... did you guys mess that up?

Yes, an experience economy can reduce theft by offering intangible experiences that are less susceptible to theft compared to physical goods.❤🎉

The 13 numbers of the barcode actually has a meaning. The first 7 numbers are the territory's number, the other 6 are the product and the companies numbers

1974: Wal-mart uses barcodes to speed up checkouts. 2024: Wal-mart slows down checkouts by getting rid of cashiers and forcing customers to do it themselves.

I don't know that having a lot of information in the barcode really matters, except maybe in very special cases. Generally it only needs to identify the item-the product, or in some cases the serial number as well. You don't need a lot of bits to nail that down. The other information can be retrieved online, more or less instantaneously. Of course, that wasn't the case in the early years of the UPC.

What a fascinating journey behind one of the most ubiquitous innovations of our time! 🔍 Joseph Woodland's creativity and persistence in developing the barcode exemplify how simple ideas can have profound impacts on industries worldwide.

And now it is being replaced by radio frequency tags.

Somehow the script feels like a highschool essay,, the presentation is still good tho..

Great ideas, real forward thinking from the Boomers. Great breakthroughs and real innovation came from the "Boomer" & "X" Generations , which is still in use today. It's bite sizes documentaries like this one that allows people to appreciate the sometimes mundane, around uas a Simple thing like a barcode, the unbelievable impact it had worldwide. After watching this short documentary, I realized that in an era of instant information, that we do not have enough knowledge.

First IBM 's "barcode" was just a number tattooed on the wrist 🤐

Why can't I print out a giant barcode or maybe just chain a bunch of smaller capacity barcodes together and store data this way? I'm aware of how much less dense it's going to be than the much more standardized methods like a memory card or something, but I feel like there's some potential in at least making something like this a standard. I'm sure a very large or lots of chained together barcodes would still be more data dense than say base64 encoded data

So the answer to "who invented the UPC" is Woodland?

Not sure if true.but a friend tdnme her grampa help invent the bar code. Maybe as in the machine or something. I was to young to ask her to clarify at the time.

There are “t” sounds in patent. Diction is key if you’re are performing voice over. It’s “paTentT” not pa’ en

It is good that IBM still exist today.

14:18 Old Wal Mart, so different from today's Wal Mart. Hobby Lobby doesn't use barcodes.

Is crazy that the improvement, just increased profits... no lower prices

Sixty seven cents for a pack of gum in 1974?!! That does NOT sound right.

4:59. Yes. That is anatomically correct. ;)

There's no way one pack of gum was 67¢ in 1974.

Is it an old program. They say barcode has been around 40 years. 1974+40=2014 🤔

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Who says bar codes can't be adulterated and glue is perfect.

The Bar Code was first developed to play the home organ for children. It was developed by Casio for their home organ players.

Pretty good video, but should have left out the recap at the end in favor of actually explaining how it works, it's not that complicated

10:33 Fun fact: His full name is George Joseph Laurer - His first, middle & last name all have 6 letters. Leading to the urban legend that barcodes are the mark of the beast 666.

The History Guy did this documentary better 2 years ago. He actually explains things and doesn't shy away from technical information or dumb down facts: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gJNxrLBq0qmoiWg.html&ab_channel=TheHistoryGuy%3AHistoryDeservestoBeRemembered

except for hobby lobby!

The barcode was invented by an Arisona farmer named Jackson Limpwood in 1826 when he had difficulty in tracking all his cattle. To do a cencus of his vast amount of animals cost a fortune in hiring men to count and record them. He first had the idea when he visited Amabooga wildlife reserve in Mamibia in Africa, and on seeing zebras thought the individual stripes the animals wore could be used as a count. Each of his animals were fitted with vertical stripes unique to each animal, when walked through a scanner at the time with a light bulb flashing at the US frequency of 60hz read the barcode so recording each animal. A bit crude at the time as the scanning equipment was housed in a container sized building, but it worked. Unlike the handheld scanners we have today.

I just learned yesterday that USAmerican craft chain Hobby Lobby doesn't use barcodes. It is because they are afraid that barcodds might "the mark of the beast". 😆 Instead they use a row of numbers.... which is just like a barcode, just without the barcode.

Alright till it wears out on labels or gets wet

QR = ????? Meaning

I thought there were some fundamentalists who argued that these things were the so-called “Mark of the Beast.” That thought probably only lasted a little while, but I clearly remember some preachers huffing and puffing about these things signifying the end times.

Sadly Marsh no longer exists.

left out the train car barcodes .... this is only 1/2 the story of the barcode

So without bar codes we wouldn't have supermarkets being nearly as popular which means in the UK Milkmen would still exist with their electric van things. Damn Bar codes are really kinda a bad invention because they saved us time allowing for small shops to become less important & big shops to become more vital leading to the corporatisation of everything.

...

"Usually hold 12 digits" ...how American of you. For example, they don't use UPCs in Europe... they use EANs, which are 13 digits, not 12. Do you know why ISBNs went to 13 digits when 10 ceased to be enough? Because they'd already become a subset of the EAN system assigned to a fictional country named Bookland so that European stores didn't need to have two separate barcodes for bookstores vs. supermarket displays.

Knowing how it works, this video is a bit lacking

The video is interesting. The added background noise ("music") is 70% too lound and generally bloody annoying and distracting. What's the purpose of it? Thumb down. If I want to hear music, I use spotify.

the bar code didnt really take off until the 1980s or 1990s at all. even then most consumers didnt like it and some would avoid buying products that had barcodes in favor of ones that did not if they had a choice. even now over 40 years since the 1980s when it was prevalently adopted in 2024... it hasnt lived up to its potential or expectations its still not standardized or uniform, each store or company or warehouser or distributer has their own bar code or bar code system or way of reading barcodes, back in the 1980s you could find multiple barcodes on a single product and clerks had to try to remember which one to scan/read or you had 4 layers of stickers where each step in the supply chain put a different barcode sticker on you can still sometimes today find 2 occasionally 3 layers of barcodes on some products you still can't get barcode stickers or printers or labels or software/inventory management programs to barcode and keep track of your own things or a program that can read the existing barcodes on your books and other belongings to keep track of them and help you organize things.

Crop circles 😂

wel,,,the 3 unnumbered lines in all barcodes represent teh number 6 so thats how it became an integral part of our lives