The Secret History of the Barcode: How Two Dudes and a Laser Changed the World

5 min read

Hey there,

Let’s kick it off with a history lesson you never knew you needed. We’re going back to a time before self-checkouts and Amazon warehouses, to the days when scanning a product was about as futuristic as space travel. I’m talking about the barcode, the tiny stripes on every product you've ever bought, and the two guys who dreamt it up in a way that changed everything.

Two Guys, A Great Idea, And Morse Code

So, rewind to the mid-1900s. Two guys named Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver were inspired by… Morse code. They saw Morse code, a system of dots and dashes, as something simple but powerful. They thought, "Could we make a visual version of this for products?" In their early designs, it looked like a circular target, a bullseye, but it had a problem. It had no purpose. What could they actually use it for?

Train Containers and… Dirt?

The initial use case? Tracking train containers. They figured they could slap a barcode on a train container to track it across the country. Great idea… except trains live outdoors and, turns out, dirt messes up the whole thing. A dirty barcode is a useless barcode. Strike one.

Meanwhile, Lasers and Grocers Get In the Mix

Fast forward to a few decades later, and the laser was invented. And it just so happened that grocery stores were struggling with a problem: keeping track of inventory and checkout times. Imagine manually inputting the price of every item in a cart. It was slow, tedious, and expensive in terms of labor. That’s when the idea of barcodes came back into play.

So, in 1974, they threw together a committee, created a rectangular barcode (goodbye, bullseye design), and combined it with the laser scanner. The first product scanned? A pack of Wrigley’s gum. And that single scan showed that with the right tools, you could instantly capture price and inventory data in one go. That was it. Game on.

A Revolution in Retail—and Walmart on the Rise

This breakthrough in scanning allowed retailers to cut costs and speed up the checkout process. Retailers like Walmart, which launched in 1962, were able to scale much faster because of this tiny advancement in tech. The barcode wasn’t just a scanner code, it was an operational revolution.

Retailers started telling suppliers, “If you want to sell here, put a barcode on your stuff.” Barcodes became essential to getting shelf space. And to keep barcodes standardized, they set up a nonprofit called GS1 to issue barcodes and make sure everyone had unique codes for their products.

GS1 – A Barcode Empire Disguised as a Nonprofit

Today, GS1 controls the barcode market, making hundreds of millions in revenue each year by issuing barcodes. And it’s genius. They have a chokehold on the industry because if you want to sell on Amazon or stock your product in stores, you need a barcode. And to get one, you pay GS1.

Let’s break it down:

- Revenue: $81 million in a single year.

- Assets: $46 million in the bank.

- Exec Paychecks: The CEO takes home $3 million a year; even the guy in “community engagement” makes $800,000.

- Overseas Assets: They stash millions offshore in the Caribbean and Central America.

Barcodes are like digital real estate now—once the concept took off, the monopoly set in. And retailers? They’re fully bought in, so there’s no going back. You pay if you want to play.

Why This Matters

Think about it. This little invention not only revolutionized grocery stores, but it made giants like Walmart possible and redefined the way retail works. And today, we have a half-billion-dollar “nonprofit” running the world of barcodes. It’s a story of how one small idea created a ripple that would reshape the entire retail landscape.

So, next time you’re scanning your groceries or tagging a product to sell, remember: behind those black-and-white lines is a story of two guys, a laser, and a global transformation in retail.