And the absolute truth - the earliest written records we have are accounting ledgers from Sumer. The written version of Epic of Gilgamesh came a few years later. The levites were a millennium later.
The origins of writing appear during the start of the pottery-phase of the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes and then stored in them. All to do with trade.
I remember the first time I saw a UPC code. It was 1976 and I had a part-time job at an area chain grocery store while going to college. We were price marking and stocking shelves when one of us noticed a UPC code on the packages and asked the assistant manager what it was. He happily announced that it was what was going to replace us and said it was the price and product description in code. I just smiled because I knew I wasn't going to be there long and I thought, I'd like to see these codes move and stock the product. That would be a neat trick.
I also worked in a small grocery store around that time. I remember the management talking about how readers were coming that would mean cashiers wouldn't need to type in each item's price.
@@cdouglas1942 Not familiar but I would imagine it is cutting edge in automation. Keep in mind I was saying that 45 years ago and as far as grocery stores go the only jobs today that upc codes are eliminating are some cashiers positions. Point well taken though. Given enough time many jobs are lost to automation.
@@charlesdudek7713 makes me think of that machine that was going up and down the aisles at a Walmart in Milpitas California back in 2017. The minder following it said it was looking at what was on the shelves. I never saw it again.
@@charlesdudek7713 To think what the AI will cause within the next decade or so. It already took my job as a translator ffs. Saw it coming, only it wasn't supposed to happen this quickly. To quote a certain South Park episode: 'They took our jobs!'
I remember pre-bar code days going to the grocery store with my mom. I was amazed at how the clerks could punch in prices so fast without looking at the keys! The receipts were just a paper tape with numbers!
My mother taught me to put the price stickers up and facing the clerks so to make their jobs easier. They loved us. Also, if a canned item went on sale, the stockers would put the new price on top of the old sticker on the can. After the sale, another sticker ( the regular price) went on top of that sticker. Some folks would try to peel off the top sticker to get the sale price.
I remember that! I also remember some were much better than others. We got to know which ones were the fastest and got in her line even if it was longer than the others.
My late father worked at IBM's Raleigh facility with George Laurer, making the UPC code work. Dad told many stories of the work they did at 602 and talked very fondly about Mr. Lauerer. IBM was an innovative business machine company that pushed the development of point-of-sale technology. Thank you for honoring the work they did!
We had a neighbor in the early 60's who got tired of managing a grocery store, went to school to learn computer programming (COBOL/FORTRAN) and got a job with the NY Central writing the software that took the "barcode" data and tracked their rolling stock, and routed it in the most efficient way (that one could compute at the time with the computing power available, which of course is orders of magnitude less than what's in your phone).
I had COBAL AND FORTRAN in my high school computer class for 1 semester in 1967 before I started my undergraduate days. COBAL was business language and FORTRAN was scientific. The computer was a full desk with a typewriter and no monitor. You entered the data via punch cards.
@@roberttelarket4934 …. Same, IBM 360 Fortran, punch cards and paper…Then I ended up working with a Varian 73 minicomputer…paper tape puncher and reader!
At the Royal Australian Naval College in 1980 our "Computing" course used an IBM 1130... FORTRAN IV on punch cards...lol It was one of TWO 1130's in the country still working..... the other was in a Technology Museum...
I thought "Oh great, the history of bar codes. I must really be bored." Twelve minutes later I find myself still watching. I didnt know I needed to know this!
I have a friend who was an early computer programmer, (punchcard days) and before Microsoft had a graphical user interface, Dick programmed a book full of macros to run his computer. Each was assigned a code and he printed these out as barcodes on laminated sheets. So he was able to run his computer without using the keyboard by just flipping through the pages and scanning barcodes. It was pretty cool for the day.
I almost always watch THG on TV, where one can't comment. So today I'm making the rounds to like everything I've seen. I love everything about The History Guy. The episodes are accurate, thorough, educational, and entertaining.
8:06 - That's reflective tape. The barcode is above and to the right, known as Automatic Car Identification, or ACI. I once read an anecdote about the Milwaukee Road issuing notepads extolling that "CarScope tells you were your car is," to which a Union Pacific agent had added, "probably in the St Joe River."
In one of the first demos to other engineers at Raleigh, NC, my friends were astonished that products could be slid across the scanner as fast as they could push them and it would not miss a one or double entry. It has taken all these years for the quality to drop so low and scratches multiply that the self check out routinely fails to scan and the computer lady complains I am trying to steal groceries.
That sort of thing is the premise of the book turned TV series Connections by James Burke. The right bits of technology coming together to ever more complicated bits.
Laser printers were delayed by the need for a suitable laser to write the image as well. Xerography was on the market for copies from 1960, but it took until 1976 for the first specialist laser printer to reach market (a replacement for line printers previously used on mainframes), and until 1984 for general mass-market laser printers to come along (and then it was a veritable flood from many companies).
In 1974 I was working for a supply company in AR that supplied over 7000 non food items for various chains of retail sellers. They developed the bar code for their reordering process for those chains eliminating the need for key punching orders into a mainframe computer for processing and billing.
@@user-vm5ud4xw6n if the Egyptians their High priests felt that the pharaoh defied the Gods or violated the holy roll of pharaoh against them in some way, they would erase every single inscription involving their name, deface every statue or likeness, Etc. There are many pharaohs that we know nothing about and time gaps in Egyptian history because of this. I assume you're aware of this at least partially but it's about the most nefarious attempt to rewrite history that we know about.
@@rufust.firefly2474 I guess that’s kinda like when you go against old family traditions and dad declares “you’re dead to me.” A former Pastor of mine had a Jewish friend who believed in Messiah Jesus. The father declared him dead to the family. He took my pastor to the cemetery and showed him his grave stone. Creepy!
@@user-vm5ud4xw6n yes, I agree from personal experience because I was unfortunate enough to have something like it applied to me years ago.. and error of course, but when a curse like that is pronounced usually people won't take it back no matter how much reality May kick them in the face. Sad. Stupid. And in a way, kind of evil too. Remember the story of " The jazz Singer, "with Al jolson?
Code 39 was developed by Dr. David Allais and Ray Stevens of Intermec in 1974. I worked as a field engineer for Intermec starting in '76, and had the pleasure of at least knowing them. Working in the bar code "Auto ID" field for more than 30 years, I earned the nickname of, "Bar Code Bob, the Scan Man". While the emphasis of this well-crafted and very accurate account is on UPC and the grocery industry, perhaps the most visible item to most, the military's use of bar codes drove the manufacture of the printers needed for on-demand labeling of goods. The US military's need to track logistics, from MRE's to tanks is perhaps the world's largest inventory control system. (See: Mil-Spec 1189.) Outside of UPC, but look at your next Amazon shipping label printed a minute before that package shipped out to you. Many people believe that UPC codes contain price information. They don't. They mearly tell the retail computers to look up that item's stock number, match it to the price in the store's database and return the price set by the retailer. If prices were in the code, the system would be no better off than old-fashioned price stickers. Until the more modern two-dimensional (2D) bar codes were developed, QR code, being far from the first, most bar code applications used that "look up this number, and return some data". Think of a car's license plate entered to return the car's owner's data. The 2D codes. On the other hand, have data stored IN the code, like a printed data file. One of the first 2D codes, called PDF 417, was indeed called that because it was a "Portabler Data File", or sometimes a "printed" data file. Finally, the read accuracy of bar codes was paramount in the beginning as it is now. Think of the codes attached to blood bags... It would be disasterous to administer mis-matched blood. Anyway, if I can add anything about bar code technology, I'd be glad to comment.
BTW, UPC codes contain two pieces of information. The left side of the code is the number assigned to the manufacturer of the item. The right hand side represents the manufacturer's item number. Look, for example, of two cans of veggies from the same company. You'll see what I mean. In Europe and many other places, coding using the same patterns, or "symbology", are called EAN codes... European Article Number.
When I was working for a small computer company in 76 (as I recall) a company in Dallas came to visit the storefront and asked for a way to read barcodes. We had no way but I had read of a company in the HEB section of mid cities of Dallas to Ft. Worth. That company in HEB was doing bar code machines for Bell Helicopter. The company I sent to them was the up start : UPS Yes the big brown trucks were getting swamped and needed to computerize back then! Thank you for the memories of those days brought back to me.
Another fantastic and informative episode of history that really does need to be remembered. You have inspired me, I have ordered a very map of my area and with my daughter will explore a very long forgotten railway that served us.
In the case of retail product sales, barcodes replaced the process of individually placing a price label or stamping the price on the product before stocking on the shelf. RFID replaced CarTrak barcodes on railroad rolling stock in North America.
I worked at a grocery store in the mid 70s and remember punching in the prices on the register. One of the advantages of the old style register is in the case of a power failure you could insert a crank and manually run the register.
I recall the power out at a Kohls grocery store in Milwaukee. Fortunately the manager had the box with the hand cranks. Called up the stock boys to supply the power.
I remember the "clackety, clackety, clackety" sound of the hand-held machines that supermarket shelf-packers used to put the price stickers on the goods.
@@scotcoon1186 , on a trip to Germany 5 years ago, an expensive country where many restaurants and businesses don't accept credit cards, we had just about run out of cash and didn't have enough to pay the cabbie who took us back to the airport; he rummaged around under the seat and found an old-style, sliding credit-card imprinter, and that's how we were able to pay him (the hotel concierge had called the cab for us, and had assured us that all the cabbies had electronic scanners for credit cards---- but this particular driver didn't).
@@scotcoon1186 I last saw one of those mechanical impression machines in a hotel I worked in about the same time. (I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of older businesses have them in the back somewhere as a backup. The electronic system do occasionally go down, sometimes for hours.)
@@goodun2974 Back about 1997 I was visiting Chicago and missed my train home and ended up having to locate one of my friends for assistance. The cabie had to use a mechanical card machine for me, too, but that was because his electronic payment terminal was broken. (Fascinating fellow, he spent a good deal of time telling me about his education in India. Unfortunately, licensing requirements for his profession had reduced him to driving a cab for the time being.)
In 1973, I worked for Gold Circle Stores in Columbus, Ohio. My job was to generate and fix bar code stickers to every product that came into the store. Cashiers used hand-held wands during checkout that emitted red laser light to scan the bar codes. This system pioneered the industry standard later printed by manufacturers.
very interesting. I remember using punch cards in the US Army. I remember watching the increase use of bar coding in business and how people realized it was quicker but more accurate than a data processor. Less typo errors.
Love this look back -- I felt a bit old recalling how difficult it was to modify existing systems to accommodate the new data (whatever that barcode happened to track, returns, defects, POS, etc.)! Always find your topics of interest! Love the deep dive into a single subject or theme, it allows time to truly consider and worthy of remembering!
Glad you mentioned the Railroad because someone told me years ago US Railroads were the first industry to use Barcodes here. I recall seeing the placards on Boxcars in the 1970s and wondered what the placard meant! They were even seen on Cabooses if my memory is right. The code readers were appropriately placed on trackside locations. #2: the scene at 8:21 is interesting. A very old VW Beetle* and a Rambler auto seen in the lot. The grocery store had many adult men walking around and men employees? I never saw this in our area then as I used to shop for mom going way back at least to the 1960s. It was all ladies in the store with exception of youthful baggers. The history of the modern "Grocery Store" could be an interesting subject. Beetles without the vent grille on the engine lid were late 1940s types I think.
Thank you, THG. Your ability to turn the mundane into interesting & educational material is impressive. You're one catchy theme song away from becoming the Bill Nye of forgotten history
My dad told me about bar codes on rail cars in the late 50s. They were used not just for tracking the cars but also for sorting them into the proper trains. He worked for Union Switch & Signal in Pittsburgh PA. One of his jobs was to go troubleshoot the 'Hump" controls when they had problems. A 'Hump' is a hill where single cars are pushed up one side and then allowed to flow down the other side by gravity. As they came down, scanners read the codes and switched them to the proper track.
The creators of Mad magazine considered the placing of a bar code on the cover of their magazine to be a defacement of the art of the cover. In response, they published an issue that featured a bar code on the cover of its' magazine that took up almost the entire cover, with only enough space for them to say this cover is a protest of having to deface their magazine with a barcode, and that they hoped the giant bar code would blow up any scanner that read it, or something like that. People my age will remember this. And now you know the rest of the story.
The term, “symbology,” would have been helpful to use when mentioning the wide variety of barcode types. Barcodes have become indispensable in health care and help to ensure that the correct meds, operations, and other care are accurately coordinated. Great video and surprisingly interesting subject.
7:09 bronchopneumonia sounded like ”bar code pneumonia” lol I thought he was making a joke or a pun or something for a sec. I had to turn on the subtitles because I didn't trust myself with what I thought I heard🤣😂
My sister owned a small business that specialized in packaging parts from government contractors to government (mostly military) specifications. Every part went into a bag with a barcode. Then those bags went into a box with a barcode. Several boxes were packed into a larger box with a barcode. Then the pallet of boxes was stretch wrapped and labeled with a barcode. All painstaking work that provided a good living at the time.
In 1974 my dad transferred from IBM's Federal Systems Division where he was a quality control engineer on the Saturn V rocket's Instrument Unit (now obsolete after the last launch that put Skylab into orbit) to the Commercial division. His new job was working in North Carolina on the then-new point of sale registers using the then-new barcode scanning system. Pretty cool.
I have worked in libraries for just over 40 years. I have worked to see names on a library card, names on metal plates burned into thin sheets of paper, and now barcodes that can catch a “deadbeat” in seconds. Barcodes have revolutionized the job!
We started using barcodes for inventory control in the '80s. They were specially printed and laminated with non-reflective coating and used as shelf-edge labels. Now you can print them at home on an inkjet.
I remember my dad submitted a proposal at Grumman to implement the barcode system for inventory control in the cutting tools department. They accepted his idea.
A wonderful story of a technology that knew a bit about but not all of it. Thank you History Guy for you great tale of technology and civilization. I remember seeing the barcode when no one was using it. Then suddenly, scanning was everywhere.
Bar codes were on supermarket stuff for quite some time before the stores had readers. I remember that a clerk in produce would weigh your selections, seal the plastic bag and write the price in Magic Marker on the plastic bag. Before that, in smaller produce shops, you would put your produce in a small paper bag and hand all your paper bags to the cashier who would weigh each bag and write the price on a larger paper bag. Then he added it up and put your small bags in the large bags. In 1964 produce for 2 was less than $3 per week.
Marsh Supermarkets was a central Indiana brand. They were among the first to adopt the convenience store concept with their Village Pantry division. Marsh and VP are long gone artifacts of my Hoosier youth.
I used to be into programming and I recall a programming exercise that involved the mathematics of barcodes, which was only briefly mentioned in this video. I wish I could remember where I saw that. Great info on this video, I didnt know the technology went so far back.
I still remember the very first time a product I bought was scanned at the cashier. We were on a school trip from Bern Swiss to Strasbourg France, around 1986 probably? I don't remember what I bought at a groceries store, but I remember that the Lady just pulled it over a piece of clear glass with some red laser thingy. In my hometown Bern the cashiers would still manually typing the product price for many more years...
In the late 1970’s Motorola we’re pushing their microprocessor in the industrial market and their programming lecture was to read bar codes. It was my first exposure to micros. We have come a long way since then.
In the 1970s and 80s my dad worked for AT&T on providing circuits for transmitting and storing the data for these Point of Sale devices. Most of the data was sent at 28 and 56 kilobits per second.
I worked for a Super Market chain that had one of the first scanners in California at Huntington Beach. This was the early 70s. We used a bulls eye and marked items with the selling price and department. What did I learn: You can tell pioneers from the arrow in their back.
When I was 11 years old in 1974, our middle school AV Club (yes I was that kid) went to the Sperry-Univac company in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania where they showed us around their lab. They gave us an IC to take home - wow! And they demonstrated their first prototype grocery store checkout system complete with barcode scanner.
Yes in late 1974 in my 20s at Ralphs Supermarket on Sunset Blvd. near La Brea in Los Angeles, California I had a Wrigley's gum package scanned. Damn I should have kept it as souvenir.
I worked as an assistant manager at an IGA in 1979 and we installed barcode readers. Had to tear up the whole floor for data lines to the registers and the "computer" sat in a highly air conditioned room and it was the size of a 4 large refrigerators placed back to back (the room was much larger). Fun times. :)
I remember when this stuff came out. I used to go to the supermarket and there were tags on all the groceries. The cashiers used to remember how much the fresh produce was. It was a huge jump for all of us.
In the mid-60’s when my mom was about 10, my mom’s older sister brought her future husband to meet the family. He was an engineer at IBM. He told her about the bar code system they were working on. My mom grew up on a family farm, didn’t even have indoor plumbing. Lasers and barcodes and computers just blew her little mind
George HW Bush ( senior) happened to visit a grocery store during the last year of his presidency and was amazed to see barcode scanning technology for the first time, even though it had become ubiquitous in retail sales by then. He always was a bit behind the times, and had obviously led a sheltered life.
@@DairyAir, Actually, I looked it up just to double check (someone else had posted a similar comment) and it was George HW Bush (Senior), not George W Bush (junior). Junior was the one who truly had the silver foot in his mouth, as Ann Richards once quipped. Neither one was a good fit for the presidency, in my opinion, but Jr did far more damage, egged in by his own personal "Darth Vader" .....
@@DairyAir Yeah I know where you're coming from; I'm 63 years old and after more hospitalizations and surgeries than I can remember or am capable of remembering, well..... Where was I going with this?🤔
I recall discussing the new UPC and the effects they would have in my college marketing class at USF 1974. I also learned to use a manual electric-mechanical cash register. Cashiers in grocery stores varied a great deal in how fast they could ring you up and sales info was limited to a dozen or so department codes. BARCODES made up-to-the minute inventory possible also. It would be informative to show people just what the operator had to do to run those old, usually NCR, beasts because the basic needs of business are still the same.
I the early 1980s I was a "Teletype" technician for NY Telephone Company, and a little bit of a gearhead as well as a lot of techie and ham radio operator, and became aware of barcodes through my connection with automobiles, and saw possibilities for them through my connection with data communications. In 1986 I was promoted to a staff position involving scrubbing of data for tracking of employee productivity and, as was the rule at all Bell System companies, I was sent to the Management Training Center for evaluation of my eligibility for promotion. This was a day long deal where an observer was assigned to you from the minute you walked in the door and you were run through a variety of scenarios to evaluate; your performance under stress, your organization skills, people skills, and even your coffee break and lunch habits, or so it was rumored. The day long scenario underlying everything else was that you were a corporate troubleshooter being sent to the original flagship store of the corporation's fleet of warehouse stores (think Home Depot/Lowe's/Menards) to take over for a manager who had left in disgrace, and determine what the trouble was and fix it. There were labor issues, union issues, employee theft issues, insubordination, etc, etc, etc. And an overflowing inbox that needed to be sorted, prioritized, and handled. At the end of the day you were assigned one of the current employees of the store to promote (I wound up with the thief and didn't get him promoted) and come up with suggestions for cutting down on the theft and inefficiencies so that the store could be profitable. And this is where barcodes came in. As I made my (improvement) presentation, using overhead slides which were available to all, but few used, I introduced all assembled to the concept and purpose of barcodes. I suggested that each supply truck, which would have a barcode of its own, would be loaded with merchandise that was scanned as it was put on the truck (I also had worked as a stevedore loading and unloading trucks for Associated Transport and remembered the clipboards with pencils on strings that we used to track what got loaded and in what order.) and that merchandise would then be scanned as it was taken off the truck, and scanned, along with the shelf location, as it was stored away, and then, when it went through the register, it would be scanned one more time to adjust inventory and track "velocity" of sales. I actually achieved some of the highest marks ever seen at the "Charm School" and was written up as "extremely highly recommended" in my final evaluation. And the final involvement with barcodes for this tale; The person who presented my evaluation to my District Manager went outside of protocol and actually asked to speak to me personally after she presented my evaluation to my boss and me. When we got on the phone for our private conflab, she told me how impressed she was with my "Inventory Improvement System" and wanted to know more about this code system that I had presented. Was this something I had dreamed up, or did it really exist? I assured her that it did exist, and was actually in use, but not yet universally. And then she asked if she could obtain the equipment to barcode her home(!) for inventory purposes. I think that was carrying thigs a little far, but I assured her it could be done and even put her in contact with the appropriate vendors. I have no idea if she ever did it. Today, having retired from my telecomm career where I went out on top as a Technical Trainer at the national technical training center for Bellcore in Lisle IL, I work at Home Depot, and get a kick out of seeing my nascent ideas followed almost to the letter.
I worked at a grocery store in California in the early 1970’s. All products had a price tag. Then I went to college for computer science and we programmed using punched cards and tape. Then we used a coding system called “candy.” It was developing code on screen. We could also send the code to a compiler to see if the results were what we intended. The quick feedback was great. We were programming in FORTRAN, COBOL, and Basic. Things developed and changed quickly from there.
Bar codes first started being used when I was a kid. I can remember before bar codes looking over products to see if you could find an older (meaning lower) price sticker on something you wanted to buy.
I saw my first barcode on March 27th or 28th of 1976. It was one of the railroad car codes, and I know the dates because I saw it on one of the cars that made up the American Freedom Train at its stop in KCK. It had to have been on the weekend portion of the stop, since I wouldn't have even thought anything of it if my dad hadn't pointed it out and he had a regular M-F job.
Back in the mid 70's, I worked at a small Mom and Pop's grocery store. I remember having to manually stamp most inventory using either the ink method or the sticky label method. It was very time consuming and aggravating because when the prices had to be changed, I had to remove the ink with alcohol or mark through it and the sticky label I would have to peel off. I left that job in 1981 and they were still using the same methods to mark their inventory. It's a great idea to have products already stamped with a barcode....that is until someone forgets to input sale prices into the computer system.
It is both fascinating and unnerving how dependent we have become on technology. This was very interesting. And, I like technology myself. So, we can all pray that nothing ever wipes out the technological things that we use!
Bravo, history I! I really enjoy your videos. Have you ever considered doing one about the phonograph Wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Edison cylinder recordings versus berliners disc recordings and all of the crazy overlapping patents that were on the early record labels. the fascinating story involving Thomas Edison, Eldridge R Johnson Of the Victor phonograph company, Marconi coming into the ring with his gold tip needles (to be used on his specially recorded only) Emile Berliner, and so many others too numerous to mention here. And did you know that in the end, the compact disc spins at the same rate as an Edison cylinder... 160 RPM? I have never known anyone to do a video on this subject and it would be fascinating if you took it on!
@@goodun2974 thanks for the tip but I found the channel host kind of bland compared with a history guy, you know what I mean? With the history guy you can emotionally get into the situation and imagine what it must have been like to have been there.. a curmudgeonly time machine, perhaps?
Awhile back, I made a comment on one of THG's videos that I could watch the history of just about anything as long as THG wrote and executed the video. And now here I sit, on a Friday night at 1121pm, learning about the history of bar codes. Thanks THG!
As a high school student in 1976, I started working part-time as checker at a Dominick's grocery store near Chicago. We had 10 IBM registers and one of those had the new barcode reader. It was a big wonky at times -- you had to keep the glass over the laser clean. But it was much faster and more accurate than keying in the prices.
Thanks THG! I lived through the introduction of barcodes and still remember the "before" times with the price-stamp-gadget (I know there's a name, but I forget it) at the local IGA.
@@williamraffen5941 ahh yes. Like the Trodat Printty or the classic Brand: U.S. Stamp and Sign 4.1 out of 5 stars 47Reviews U.S. Stamp and Sign Traditional 4 Digit Rubber Number, Type Size 3, Black (Rn034) 
I was a child in the 1970s before barcodes were in common use in grocery stores. We had a grocery store called Pay 'n Save. They provided grease pencils and the shopper would write the price on each item. They advertised lower prices because they didn't have to pay workers to price items.
This is insane. I'm currently programming 160 handheld scanners for our local health unit. To do that, I'm scanning a bunch of barcodes. Weird coincidence
You can often spot those "ACI" Cartrak bar codes on freight cars even today. They standout even under paint. I have whole decal sheets of the things for my trains, I model 1979 as they were phased out.
I can remember the old bulk grocery store where you had to write the price of items on the top of the can with a black crayon bar codes hadn't made it to real WI yet in the late 70s when I went shopping with my Gran
How on earth can THG manage to make the history of BARCODES interesting?! I swear, this fellow can make learning the history of literally anything worth watching.
Great video, its funny looking back and when it was all getting put in place. We didn't trust the systems and always checked the prices after we left the store....
I worked at a large grocery chain in Florida in the early 80s when they started implementing barcodes to check out. The customers hated it because the store stopped putting the prices on the products and they didn’t trust the system to get the price right. It took a while people to get used to and to trust barcodes. Now, you can’t live without them.
Mr. History Guy, love your channel! Love the ties! You do know though, your missing part of your suit? The arms…history that deserves to be remembered. Lol!
Before bar codes, most people knew to look for cans in the back of a shelf that had older, lower, prices. There was a balance between removing stock from the shelves and repricing with the new higher price and the cost of labor to do this.
I forget the lecturer, but I never forget his quip: "We like to think writing was invented by poets, but it was actually invented by accountants."
I prefer the idea of poets!
Kind of like the Levites
And the absolute truth - the earliest written records we have are accounting ledgers from Sumer. The written version of Epic of Gilgamesh came a few years later. The levites were a millennium later.
@@user-vm5ud4xw6n Maybe so... but thats NOT what writing was initially developed for!
The origins of writing appear during the start of the pottery-phase of the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes and then stored in them.
All to do with trade.
I remember the first time I saw a UPC code. It was 1976 and I had a part-time job at an area chain grocery store while going to college. We were price marking and stocking shelves when one of us noticed a UPC code on the packages and asked the assistant manager what it was. He happily announced that it was what was going to replace us and said it was the price and product description in code. I just smiled because I knew I wasn't going to be there long and I thought, I'd like to see these codes move and stock the product. That would be a neat trick.
I also worked in a small grocery store around that time. I remember the management talking about how readers were coming that would mean cashiers wouldn't need to type in each item's price.
Hey Charles, reread your last sentence and then think about how Amazon warehouses operate.
@@cdouglas1942 Not familiar but I would imagine it is cutting edge in automation. Keep in mind I was saying that 45 years ago and as far as grocery stores go the only jobs today that upc codes are eliminating are some cashiers positions. Point well taken though. Given enough time many jobs are lost to automation.
@@charlesdudek7713 makes me think of that machine that was going up and down the aisles at a Walmart in Milpitas California back in 2017. The minder following it said it was looking at what was on the shelves. I never saw it again.
@@charlesdudek7713 To think what the AI will cause within the next decade or so. It already took my job as a translator ffs. Saw it coming, only it wasn't supposed to happen this quickly.
To quote a certain South Park episode: 'They took our jobs!'
Your videos are my "happy place." The sun goes down, the cookies, wine and cheese come out and the slippers go on, and there's YOU. HEAVEN
I remember pre-bar code days going to the grocery store with my mom. I was amazed at how the clerks could punch in prices so fast without looking at the keys! The receipts were just a paper tape with numbers!
Yes!
My mother taught me to put the price stickers up and facing the clerks so to make their jobs easier. They loved us.
Also, if a canned item went on sale, the stockers would put the new price on top of the old sticker on the can. After the sale, another sticker ( the regular price) went on top of that sticker. Some folks would try to peel off the top sticker to get the sale price.
I remember that! I also remember some were much better than others. We got to know which ones were the fastest and got in her line even if it was longer than the others.
My late father worked at IBM's Raleigh facility with George Laurer, making the UPC code work. Dad told many stories of the work they did at 602 and talked very fondly about Mr. Lauerer. IBM was an innovative business machine company that pushed the development of point-of-sale technology. Thank you for honoring the work they did!
12 minutes on barcodes, and I loved every minute of it. Good job THG and also your co-conspirators at THG headquarters
Hi ! THG, is a whole lot, healthier, than MSG.....TLC to all learning this educational, pro video....congrats to THE T.H.G. Knight
@@petersack5074 Wow, TMI.
( JK )
We had a neighbor in the early 60's who got tired of managing a grocery store, went to school to learn computer programming (COBOL/FORTRAN) and got a job with the NY Central writing the software that took the "barcode" data and tracked their rolling stock, and routed it in the most efficient way (that one could compute at the time with the computing power available, which of course is orders of magnitude less than what's in your phone).
I had COBAL AND FORTRAN in my high school computer class for 1 semester in 1967 before I started my undergraduate days.
COBAL was business language and FORTRAN was scientific.
The computer was a full desk with a typewriter and no monitor. You entered the data via punch cards.
@@roberttelarket4934 …. Same, IBM 360 Fortran, punch cards and paper…Then I ended up working with a Varian 73 minicomputer…paper tape puncher and reader!
Fast forward 50+ years...the railroads still have trouble tracking cars.
At the Royal Australian Naval College in 1980 our "Computing" course used an IBM 1130... FORTRAN IV on punch cards...lol It was one of TWO 1130's in the country still working..... the other was in a Technology Museum...
@@katieandkevinsears7724 Railroad tracking is now done with radio transponders. No batteries required, as in your car's EZtag.
I thought "Oh great, the history of bar codes. I must really be bored." Twelve minutes later I find myself still watching. I didnt know I needed to know this!
As someone who deals with barcodes all day at multiple levels... I've been waiting for this episode
Love the memorial picture of your best cat friend. Very admirable. I lost my best cat friend today.
😞 I am so sorry for your loss. Please accept my deepest condolences 💐.
DaveM, so sorry about your friend. Cats are so wonderful, still miss mine. I love to see the History Cat too! Take care.
I have a friend who was an early computer programmer, (punchcard days) and before Microsoft had a graphical user interface, Dick programmed a book full of macros to run his computer. Each was assigned a code and he printed these out as barcodes on laminated sheets. So he was able to run his computer without using the keyboard by just flipping through the pages and scanning barcodes. It was pretty cool for the day.
I almost always watch THG on TV, where one can't comment. So today I'm making the rounds to like everything I've seen. I love everything about The History Guy. The episodes are accurate, thorough, educational, and entertaining.
8:06 - That's reflective tape. The barcode is above and to the right, known as Automatic Car Identification, or ACI.
I once read an anecdote about the Milwaukee Road issuing notepads extolling that "CarScope tells you were your car is," to which a Union Pacific agent had added, "probably in the St Joe River."
7:36 That does seem to be a mix-up. Good catch.
I also have been told that railroad’s were using barcodes for car identification sometime before the idea was adopted by the retail business.
I am consistently impressed by your ability to take things that are relatively mundane and are certainly commonplace, and make them interesting.
Bar code technology has always fascinated me. I think it's amazing how it can read the code no matter which way it's turned while scanning.
In one of the first demos to other engineers at Raleigh, NC, my friends were astonished that products could be slid across the scanner as fast as they could push them and it would not miss a one or double entry. It has taken all these years for the quality to drop so low and scratches multiply that the self check out routinely fails to scan and the computer lady complains I am trying to steal groceries.
@@terryrogers6232 The computer lady thinks I'm slow.
I didn't realize that they had worked on the bar code so long. And they would get so close but the needed tech was just out of reach.
That sort of thing is the premise of the book turned TV series Connections by James Burke. The right bits of technology coming together to ever more complicated bits.
Laser printers were delayed by the need for a suitable laser to write the image as well. Xerography was on the market for copies from 1960, but it took until 1976 for the first specialist laser printer to reach market (a replacement for line printers previously used on mainframes), and until 1984 for general mass-market laser printers to come along (and then it was a veritable flood from many companies).
In 1974 I was working for a supply company in AR that supplied over 7000 non food items for various chains of retail sellers. They developed the bar code for their reordering process for those chains eliminating the need for key punching orders into a mainframe computer for processing and billing.
Hopefully people will realise history doesn't have to be hundreds of years old what happened yesterday is history
And no matter how people try or how they feel about it…you cannot erase history. You can destroy symbols of it but you can’t erase it!
@@user-vm5ud4xw6n if the Egyptians their High priests felt that the pharaoh defied the Gods or violated the holy roll of pharaoh against them in some way, they would erase every single inscription involving their name, deface every statue or likeness, Etc. There are many pharaohs that we know nothing about and time gaps in Egyptian history because of this. I assume you're aware of this at least partially but it's about the most nefarious attempt to rewrite history that we know about.
@@rufust.firefly2474 I guess that’s kinda like when you go against old family traditions and dad declares “you’re dead to me.”
A former Pastor of mine had a Jewish friend who believed in Messiah Jesus. The father declared him dead to the family. He took my pastor to the cemetery and showed him his grave stone. Creepy!
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is a gift, that's why we call it present." -- Master Oogway
@@user-vm5ud4xw6n yes, I agree from personal experience because I was unfortunate enough to have something like it applied to me years ago.. and error of course, but when a curse like that is pronounced usually people won't take it back no matter how much reality May kick them in the face. Sad. Stupid. And in a way, kind of evil too.
Remember the story of " The jazz Singer, "with Al jolson?
Code 39 was developed by Dr. David Allais and Ray Stevens of Intermec in 1974. I worked as a field engineer for Intermec starting in '76, and had the pleasure of at least knowing them. Working in the bar code "Auto ID" field for more than 30 years, I earned the nickname of, "Bar Code Bob, the Scan Man". While the emphasis of this well-crafted and very accurate account is on UPC and the grocery industry, perhaps the most visible item to most, the military's use of bar codes drove the manufacture of the printers needed for on-demand labeling of goods. The US military's need to track logistics, from MRE's to tanks is perhaps the world's largest inventory control system. (See: Mil-Spec 1189.) Outside of UPC, but look at your next Amazon shipping label printed a minute before that package shipped out to you.
Many people believe that UPC codes contain price information. They don't. They mearly tell the retail computers to look up that item's stock number, match it to the price in the store's database and return the price set by the retailer. If prices were in the code, the system would be no better off than old-fashioned price stickers.
Until the more modern two-dimensional (2D) bar codes were developed, QR code, being far from the first, most bar code applications used that "look up this number, and return some data". Think of a car's license plate entered to return the car's owner's data. The 2D codes. On the other hand, have data stored IN the code, like a printed data file. One of the first 2D codes, called PDF 417, was indeed called that because it was a "Portabler Data File", or sometimes a "printed" data file.
Finally, the read accuracy of bar codes was paramount in the beginning as it is now. Think of the codes attached to blood bags... It would be disasterous to administer mis-matched blood.
Anyway, if I can add anything about bar code technology, I'd be glad to comment.
BTW, UPC codes contain two pieces of information. The left side of the code is the number assigned to the manufacturer of the item. The right hand side represents the manufacturer's item number. Look, for example, of two cans of veggies from the same company. You'll see what I mean. In Europe and many other places, coding using the same patterns, or "symbology", are called EAN codes... European Article Number.
When I was working for a small computer company in 76 (as I recall) a company in Dallas came to visit the storefront and asked for a way to read barcodes. We had no way but I had read of a company in the HEB section of mid cities of Dallas to Ft. Worth. That company in HEB was doing bar code machines for Bell Helicopter. The company I sent to them was the up start : UPS Yes the big brown trucks were getting swamped and needed to computerize back then! Thank you for the memories of those days brought back to me.
At 7:20
Chicago Rock Island and Pacific RR
GM models
F7A,F7B,F7A
An ABA set of F units,,,as good as it gets!
Another fantastic and informative episode of history that really does need to be remembered. You have inspired me, I have ordered a very map of my area and with my daughter will explore a very long forgotten railway that served us.
"The grocery industry, from supplies to supermarkets, adopted the technology wholesale."
Oh, Lance ... I see what you did there!
@@somercet1 That's The History Guy's first name. Lance Gieger and his son Josh do a weekly podcast where Josh introduces both of them.
In the case of retail product sales, barcodes replaced the process of individually placing a price label or stamping the price on the product before stocking on the shelf. RFID replaced CarTrak barcodes on railroad rolling stock in North America.
I worked at a grocery store in the mid 70s and remember punching in the prices on the register. One of the advantages of the old style register is in the case of a power failure you could insert a crank and manually run the register.
I ran a register like that in a Pizza Hut. You also had to figure out the change on your own... and it's actually very easy.
I recall the power out at a Kohls grocery store in Milwaukee. Fortunately the manager had the box with the hand cranks. Called up the stock boys to supply the power.
I remember the "clackety, clackety, clackety" sound of the hand-held machines that supermarket shelf-packers used to put the price stickers on the goods.
And the credit card machines that did an impression of the card.
Last time I saw one was the UDF at 49 and Union Road near Dayton, Ohio, around 2000.
@@scotcoon1186 , on a trip to Germany 5 years ago, an expensive country where many restaurants and businesses don't accept credit cards, we had just about run out of cash and didn't have enough to pay the cabbie who took us back to the airport; he rummaged around under the seat and found an old-style, sliding credit-card imprinter, and that's how we were able to pay him (the hotel concierge had called the cab for us, and had assured us that all the cabbies had electronic scanners for credit cards---- but this particular driver didn't).
Used one of those at 7-11 in 1985
@@scotcoon1186 I last saw one of those mechanical impression machines in a hotel I worked in about the same time. (I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of older businesses have them in the back somewhere as a backup. The electronic system do occasionally go down, sometimes for hours.)
@@goodun2974 Back about 1997 I was visiting Chicago and missed my train home and ended up having to locate one of my friends for assistance. The cabie had to use a mechanical card machine for me, too, but that was because his electronic payment terminal was broken. (Fascinating fellow, he spent a good deal of time telling me about his education in India. Unfortunately, licensing requirements for his profession had reduced him to driving a cab for the time being.)
In 1973, I worked for Gold Circle Stores in Columbus, Ohio. My job was to generate and fix bar code stickers to every product that came into the store. Cashiers used hand-held wands during checkout that emitted red laser light to scan the bar codes. This system pioneered the industry standard later printed by manufacturers.
Onsidering that this is such a mundane,everyday item now,it`s a truly amazingly interesting historical tale. Amazing!
Do you even remember the first UPC you ever saw? I don't. Must have been in the late 80's but it seems like they've been around forever.
@@dbmail545 No, I would have been in HS at that time
very interesting. I remember using punch cards in the US Army. I remember watching the increase use of bar coding in business and how people realized it was quicker but more accurate than a data processor. Less typo errors.
Love this look back -- I felt a bit old recalling how difficult it was to modify existing systems to accommodate the new data (whatever that barcode happened to track, returns, defects, POS, etc.)! Always find your topics of interest! Love the deep dive into a single subject or theme, it allows time to truly consider and worthy of remembering!
The Marsh grocery store mentioned was located in Troy, OH.
You get so excited in you diction that it's infectious! Thank you again for everything you do!!!!!
Glad you mentioned the Railroad because someone told me years ago US Railroads were the first industry to use Barcodes here. I recall seeing the placards on Boxcars in the 1970s and wondered what the placard meant! They were even seen on Cabooses if my memory is right. The code readers were appropriately placed on trackside locations. #2: the scene at 8:21 is interesting. A very old VW Beetle* and a Rambler auto seen in the lot. The grocery store had many adult men walking around and men employees? I never saw this in our area then as I used to shop for mom going way back at least to the 1960s. It was all ladies in the store with exception of youthful baggers. The history of the modern "Grocery Store" could be an interesting subject. Beetles without the vent grille on the engine lid were late 1940s types I think.
Thank you, THG. Your ability to turn the mundane into interesting & educational material is impressive. You're one catchy theme song away from becoming the Bill Nye of forgotten history
My dad told me about bar codes on rail cars in the late 50s. They were used not just for tracking the cars but also for sorting them into the proper trains. He worked for Union Switch & Signal in Pittsburgh PA. One of his jobs was to go troubleshoot the 'Hump" controls when they had problems. A 'Hump' is a hill where single cars are pushed up one side and then allowed to flow down the other side by gravity. As they came down, scanners read the codes and switched them to the proper track.
The creators of Mad magazine considered the placing of a bar code on the cover of their magazine to be a defacement of the art of the cover. In response, they published an issue that featured a bar code on the cover of its' magazine that took up almost the entire cover, with only enough space for them to say this cover is a protest of having to deface their magazine with a barcode, and that they hoped the giant bar code would blow up any scanner that read it, or something like that. People my age will remember this. And now you know the rest of the story.
MAD was a brilliant magazine back in the day.
@@oz_jones Do you remember that issue?
First thing I thought of when I saw the video title
@@davev8560 Great minds think alike!
The term, “symbology,” would have been helpful to use when mentioning the wide variety of barcode types. Barcodes have become indispensable in health care and help to ensure that the correct meds, operations, and other care are accurately coordinated. Great video and surprisingly interesting subject.
yes. good info. Dr. to nurses...'' we just gotta find a way, to keep towels, and such, out of the person being operated on ....'' !!
@@petersack5074 guess it was never your job to count "laps & sponges" in a bloody mess of a kick-bucket. It's not an easy or tidy job.
7:09 bronchopneumonia sounded like ”bar code pneumonia” lol I thought he was making a joke or a pun or something for a sec. I had to turn on the subtitles because I didn't trust myself with what I thought I heard🤣😂
I thought that bar code pneumonia was joke in bad taste. History Guy speaks clearly, so I don't use subtitles when watching.
My sister owned a small business that specialized in packaging parts from government contractors to government (mostly military) specifications. Every part went into a bag with a barcode. Then those bags went into a box with a barcode. Several boxes were packed into a larger box with a barcode. Then the pallet of boxes was stretch wrapped and labeled with a barcode. All painstaking work that provided a good living at the time.
Glad you mentioned code 39!
In 1974 my dad transferred from IBM's Federal Systems Division where he was a quality control engineer on the Saturn V rocket's Instrument Unit (now obsolete after the last launch that put Skylab into orbit) to the Commercial division. His new job was working in North Carolina on the then-new point of sale registers using the then-new barcode scanning system. Pretty cool.
your the best history teacher in the world....im glad i found your channel 2yrs ago...
I have worked in libraries for just over 40 years. I have worked to see names on a library card, names on metal plates burned into thin sheets of paper, and now barcodes that can catch a “deadbeat” in seconds. Barcodes have revolutionized the job!
We started using barcodes for inventory control in the '80s. They were specially printed and laminated with non-reflective coating and used as shelf-edge labels. Now you can print them at home on an inkjet.
I remember my dad submitted a proposal at Grumman to implement the barcode system for inventory control in the cutting tools department. They accepted his idea.
Clyde Dawson, first person to use UPC to purchase a product was my neighbor. Great guy, very humble. Didn't know he did this until after he died.
A wonderful story of a technology that knew a bit about but not all of it. Thank you History Guy for you great tale of technology and civilization. I remember seeing the barcode when no one was using it. Then suddenly, scanning was everywhere.
congrats Mr. History Guy! closin' in on a cool million subs!!!!
Congrats to Mr. History Guy. I didn't even notice he was close to it
Some people would be happy with his missing 28,000 subs.
Bar codes were on supermarket stuff for quite some time before the stores had readers. I remember that a clerk in produce would weigh your selections, seal the plastic bag and write the price in Magic Marker on the plastic bag.
Before that, in smaller produce shops, you would put your produce in a small paper bag and hand all your paper bags to the cashier who would weigh each bag and write the price on a larger paper bag. Then he added it up and put your small bags in the large bags. In 1964 produce for 2 was less than $3 per week.
My neighbor was George Laurer, he helped to create the universal bar code. He had lots of great stories about IBM.
Even the most mundane ordinary everyday thing has a history. History was always a fave of mine in school.
Marsh Supermarkets was a central Indiana brand. They were among the first to adopt the convenience store concept with their Village Pantry division. Marsh and VP are long gone artifacts of my Hoosier youth.
I used to be into programming and I recall a programming exercise that involved the mathematics of barcodes, which was only briefly mentioned in this video. I wish I could remember where I saw that. Great info on this video, I didnt know the technology went so far back.
I let out an involuntary chuckle when you casually mentioned that things got less convenient when government got involved. :D
An understatement at its best! Any simple idea can become complex when government gets involved
@@ronfullerton3162 You are absolutely correct about that. Like you say, anytime the government gets involved, you better watch your wallet.
@@thomaskelley5180 How true!
If you want to know how “easy” the government made bar codes read MIL-STD-130.
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” is the worst thing you can hear.
This guy is WICKED smart! And, he's an awesome teacher, too. Well done!
I still remember the very first time a product I bought was scanned at the cashier.
We were on a school trip from Bern Swiss to Strasbourg France, around 1986 probably?
I don't remember what I bought at a groceries store, but I remember that the Lady just pulled it over a piece of clear glass with some red laser thingy.
In my hometown Bern the cashiers would still manually typing the product price for many more years...
In the late 1970’s Motorola we’re pushing their microprocessor in the industrial market and their programming lecture was to read bar codes. It was my first exposure to micros. We have come a long way since then.
In the 1970s and 80s my dad worked for AT&T on providing circuits for transmitting and storing the data for these Point of Sale devices.
Most of the data was sent at 28 and 56 kilobits per second.
I worked for a Super Market chain that had one of the first scanners in California at Huntington Beach. This was the early 70s. We used a bulls eye and marked items with the selling price and department. What did I learn: You can tell pioneers from the arrow in their back.
I remember Mad Magazine calling the bar code, "The Six Million Dollar Man's Fingerprint."
Mad Magazine had a spate where every cover mocked the barcode on it.
Yes, including one cover in which a bar code filled the whole thing.
MAD was so clever and creative back then, I loved that magazine
I loved looking for the little margin gags.
I remember that too, and how they disliked putting the barcode on their cover.
Whilst I may not have heard of or know much about the subject. I usually find the feature interesting and come away having learned something........
I can't tell you how much I look forward to these posts.
When I was 11 years old in 1974, our middle school AV Club (yes I was that kid) went to the Sperry-Univac company in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania where they showed us around their lab. They gave us an IC to take home - wow! And they demonstrated their first prototype grocery store checkout system complete with barcode scanner.
Yes in late 1974 in my 20s at Ralphs Supermarket on Sunset Blvd. near La Brea in Los Angeles, California I had a Wrigley's gum package scanned. Damn I should have kept it as souvenir.
“Feed the algorithm.”
Nice work on this one. Thanks.
I worked as an assistant manager at an IGA in 1979 and we installed barcode readers.
Had to tear up the whole floor for data lines to the registers and the "computer" sat in a highly air conditioned room and it was the size of a 4 large refrigerators placed back to back (the room was much larger).
Fun times. :)
I remember when this stuff came out. I used to go to the supermarket and there were tags on all the groceries. The cashiers used to remember how much the fresh produce was. It was a huge jump for all of us.
In the mid-60’s when my mom was about 10, my mom’s older sister brought her future husband to meet the family. He was an engineer at IBM. He told her about the bar code system they were working on. My mom grew up on a family farm, didn’t even have indoor plumbing. Lasers and barcodes and computers just blew her little mind
George HW Bush ( senior) happened to visit a grocery store during the last year of his presidency and was amazed to see barcode scanning technology for the first time, even though it had become ubiquitous in retail sales by then. He always was a bit behind the times, and had obviously led a sheltered life.
@@goodun2974 how did it go “….born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Ah, the good old days of politics…
@@DairyAir, Actually, I looked it up just to double check (someone else had posted a similar comment) and it was George HW Bush (Senior), not George W Bush (junior). Junior was the one who truly had the silver foot in his mouth, as Ann Richards once quipped. Neither one was a good fit for the presidency, in my opinion, but Jr did far more damage, egged in by his own personal "Darth Vader" .....
@@goodun2974 I have a hard time remembering where I put my keys sometimes and then forget what I was looking for. I was close, lol 😉
@@DairyAir Yeah I know where you're coming from; I'm 63 years old and after more hospitalizations and surgeries than I can remember or am capable of remembering, well..... Where was I going with this?🤔
I recall discussing the new UPC and the effects they would have in my college marketing class at USF 1974.
I also learned to use a manual electric-mechanical cash register. Cashiers in grocery stores varied a great deal in how fast they could ring you up and sales info was limited to a dozen or so department codes. BARCODES made up-to-the minute inventory possible also.
It would be informative to show people just what the operator had to do to run those old, usually NCR, beasts because the basic needs of business are still the same.
Good morning THG, Happy Friday!
I the early 1980s I was a "Teletype" technician for NY Telephone Company, and a little bit of a gearhead as well as a lot of techie and ham radio operator, and became aware of barcodes through my connection with automobiles, and saw possibilities for them through my connection with data communications. In 1986 I was promoted to a staff position involving scrubbing of data for tracking of employee productivity and, as was the rule at all Bell System companies, I was sent to the Management Training Center for evaluation of my eligibility for promotion. This was a day long deal where an observer was assigned to you from the minute you walked in the door and you were run through a variety of scenarios to evaluate; your performance under stress, your organization skills, people skills, and even your coffee break and lunch habits, or so it was rumored.
The day long scenario underlying everything else was that you were a corporate troubleshooter being sent to the original flagship store of the corporation's fleet of warehouse stores (think Home Depot/Lowe's/Menards) to take over for a manager who had left in disgrace, and determine what the trouble was and fix it. There were labor issues, union issues, employee theft issues, insubordination, etc, etc, etc. And an overflowing inbox that needed to be sorted, prioritized, and handled.
At the end of the day you were assigned one of the current employees of the store to promote (I wound up with the thief and didn't get him promoted) and come up with suggestions for cutting down on the theft and inefficiencies so that the store could be profitable.
And this is where barcodes came in.
As I made my (improvement) presentation, using overhead slides which were available to all, but few used, I introduced all assembled to the concept and purpose of barcodes. I suggested that each supply truck, which would have a barcode of its own, would be loaded with merchandise that was scanned as it was put on the truck (I also had worked as a stevedore loading and unloading trucks for Associated Transport and remembered the clipboards with pencils on strings that we used to track what got loaded and in what order.) and that merchandise would then be scanned as it was taken off the truck, and scanned, along with the shelf location, as it was stored away, and then, when it went through the register, it would be scanned one more time to adjust inventory and track "velocity" of sales.
I actually achieved some of the highest marks ever seen at the "Charm School" and was written up as "extremely highly recommended" in my final evaluation.
And the final involvement with barcodes for this tale; The person who presented my evaluation to my District Manager went outside of protocol and actually asked to speak to me personally after she presented my evaluation to my boss and me. When we got on the phone for our private conflab, she told me how impressed she was with my "Inventory Improvement System" and wanted to know more about this code system that I had presented. Was this something I had dreamed up, or did it really exist? I assured her that it did exist, and was actually in use, but not yet universally. And then she asked if she could obtain the equipment to barcode her home(!) for inventory purposes.
I think that was carrying thigs a little far, but I assured her it could be done and even put her in contact with the appropriate vendors. I have no idea if she ever did it.
Today, having retired from my telecomm career where I went out on top as a Technical Trainer at the national technical training center for Bellcore in Lisle IL, I work at Home Depot, and get a kick out of seeing my nascent ideas followed almost to the letter.
Thank you for another, informative and entertaining program. All the best.
I worked at a grocery store in California in the early 1970’s. All products had a price tag. Then I went to college for computer science and we programmed using punched cards and tape. Then we used a coding system called “candy.” It was developing code on screen. We could also send the code to a compiler to see if the results were what we intended. The quick feedback was great. We were programming in FORTRAN, COBOL, and Basic. Things developed and changed quickly from there.
History Guy, congratulations on almost reaching 1 million subscribers. I hope you get the 28,000 you need soon. You deserve it.
Bar codes first started being used when I was a kid.
I can remember before bar codes looking over products to see if you could find an older (meaning lower) price sticker on something you wanted to buy.
I saw my first barcode on March 27th or 28th of 1976. It was one of the railroad car codes, and I know the dates because I saw it on one of the cars that made up the American Freedom Train at its stop in KCK. It had to have been on the weekend portion of the stop, since I wouldn't have even thought anything of it if my dad hadn't pointed it out and he had a regular M-F job.
Back in the mid 70's, I worked at a small Mom and Pop's grocery store. I remember having to manually stamp most inventory using either the ink method or the sticky label method. It was very time consuming and aggravating because when the prices had to be changed, I had to remove the ink with alcohol or mark through it and the sticky label I would have to peel off. I left that job in 1981 and they were still using the same methods to mark their inventory. It's a great idea to have products already stamped with a barcode....that is until someone forgets to input sale prices into the computer system.
It is both fascinating and unnerving how dependent we have become on technology. This was very interesting. And, I like technology myself. So, we can all pray that nothing ever wipes out the technological things that we use!
THG has become a staple in our daily viewing. Thank you for the excellent content.
Bravo, history I! I really enjoy your videos. Have you ever considered doing one about the phonograph Wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Edison cylinder recordings versus berliners disc recordings and all of the crazy overlapping patents that were on the early record labels.
the fascinating story involving Thomas Edison, Eldridge R Johnson
Of the Victor phonograph company, Marconi coming into the ring with his gold tip needles (to be used on his specially recorded only)
Emile Berliner, and so many others too numerous to mention here. And did you know that in the end, the compact disc spins at the same rate as an Edison cylinder... 160 RPM? I have never known anyone to do a video on this subject and it would be fascinating if you took it on!
See "Technology Connections" on RUclips for your "phonograph wars".
@@goodun2974 thanks for the tip but I found the channel host kind of bland compared with a history guy, you know what I mean? With the history guy you can emotionally get into the situation and imagine what it must have been like to have been there.. a curmudgeonly time machine, perhaps?
Awhile back, I made a comment on one of THG's videos that I could watch the history of just about anything as long as THG wrote and executed the video.
And now here I sit, on a Friday night at 1121pm, learning about the history of bar codes. Thanks THG!
As a high school student in 1976, I started working part-time as checker at a Dominick's grocery store near Chicago. We had 10 IBM registers and one of those had the new barcode reader. It was a big wonky at times -- you had to keep the glass over the laser clean. But it was much faster and more accurate than keying in the prices.
Thanks THG! I lived through the introduction of barcodes and still remember the "before" times with the price-stamp-gadget (I know there's a name, but I forget it) at the local IGA.
Price gun?
@@sandybarnes887
Yes, but it was more a stamp than a gun. You rolled dials to the correct price and stamped straight down.
@@williamraffen5941 ahh yes. Like the Trodat Printty or the classic Brand: U.S. Stamp and Sign
4.1 out of 5 stars 47Reviews
U.S. Stamp and Sign Traditional 4 Digit Rubber Number, Type Size 3, Black (Rn034)

I was a child in the 1970s before barcodes were in common use in grocery stores. We had a grocery store called Pay 'n Save. They provided grease pencils and the shopper would write the price on each item. They advertised lower prices because they didn't have to pay workers to price items.
This is insane. I'm currently programming 160 handheld scanners for our local health unit. To do that, I'm scanning a bunch of barcodes. Weird coincidence
RUclips is watching you.
Your voice makes history even more interesting. Thanks THG.
You can often spot those "ACI" Cartrak bar codes on freight cars even today. They standout even under paint.
I have whole decal sheets of the things for my trains, I model 1979 as they were phased out.
I can remember the old bulk grocery store where you had to write the price of items on the top of the can with a black crayon bar codes hadn't made it to real WI yet in the late 70s when I went shopping with my Gran
Amazing to me to realize that one of the great game-changing technologies, the LASER in its many forms, has become ubiquitous in my lifetime.
*pew pew pew noises*
Originally the LASER was a solution looking for a problem.
@@navret1707 I seem to remember a magazine cover many years ago that said pretty much that.
Most scanners are switching to digital imaging. The laser is old tech :)
How on earth can THG manage to make the history of BARCODES interesting?! I swear, this fellow can make learning the history of literally anything worth watching.
Love the artillery shell in the back ground. Sign of the the future to come.
I’ll paint mine Blue.
In THG's discussion, I didn't hear any reference to NCR's contributions to the bar code history. Wondering why?
It was exciting to see the change from those little price stickers to the scanner.
Great video, its funny looking back and when it was all getting put in place. We didn't trust the systems and always checked the prices after we left the store....
I worked at a large grocery chain in Florida in the early 80s when they started implementing barcodes to check out. The customers hated it because the store stopped putting the prices on the products and they didn’t trust the system to get the price right. It took a while people to get used to and to trust barcodes. Now, you can’t live without them.
Mr. History Guy, love your channel! Love the ties! You do know though, your missing part of your suit? The arms…history that deserves to be remembered. Lol!
I absolutely love the militarization decor on the set!
Thanks for another interesting and informative video. I always enjoy them and often rewatch them when I need something pleasant. Have a great day 😊
I have a buddy who has been importing room dividers for the last 30yrs. He finally got the factory in Fujian to put bar codes on in 2008
Before bar codes, most people knew to look for cans in the back of a shelf that had older, lower, prices. There was a balance between removing stock from the shelves and repricing with the new higher price and the cost of labor to do this.
Your work is always a bullseye ... that doesn't smear... Well Done!