While the ubiquitous barcode is now estimated to be scanned more than five billion times every day, its origins date back to April 1973.
Forty years ago yesterday – on 3 April 1973 – grocery industry leaders in the US agreed to implement a single product identification standard.
It took around a year for the bar codes to come to market, with the first ever product to be scanned using a bar code being Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum in 1974.
The bar code system is now administered globally by GS1 and is a component of the GS1 System of Standards, which are now used in 150 countries in a variety of applications including RFID tags and real-time global data exchanges.
GS1 UK chief executive Gary Lynch said? "We're delighted to be celebrating 40 years of standardised bar codes.
"But the true celebration has to be about what this first important collaboration then led on to – the most widely used system of standards for tracking products across geographical and cultural boundaries in the world today."
Barcode facts: did you know?
The first self-scanning store in the UK was Safeway in Solihull in March 1995 All bar code numbers issued in Singapore start 888 and those from Korea start 880. Their bar code authorities secured these prefixes because 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture The bar codes on newspapers differ from most others because they include the number of the day in the week as the second from last digit and the week number in a small additional code At first wine companies refused to bar code their labels because they claimed the bottles were "table decoration" Bar code scanners linked to voice synthesisers are used to help blind people do their shopping. The devices can recognise and name over 40,000 different products Bar codes printed red on a white background are invisible to scanners.
