Today marks the 57th anniversary of the thing that’s on everything. Everything you buy, that is. Well, maybe not everything you buy. Like, if you bought a puppy, or something, it would probably not have it. But everything else would have a bar code.
To celebrate, Google has changed it’s front-page to feature the bar code. The research that culminated in its invention was started because Bernard Silver overheard a local food chain boss asking a Drexel Institute dean to design something that could read product data automatically. So he paired up with Norman Joseph Woodland, another graduate student, and they went to town.
The first design incorporated patterns of ink that glowed under ultraviolet light. This proved too expensive and gross, as they probably found semen everywhere in their lab. The next design was for a series of concentric circles. Wow. Imagine that. Barcodes like giant, freaky bulls-eyes. I don’t know if I could handle scanning them. Lord knows I can barely handle it now. Think of all the stoned checkout clerks staring at giant almost eye-looking things right before they ring up your purchase. They patented that design, and it became, years later, the bar code.
The more you know.
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