The modern period of barcodes started from mid 1970’s. NAFC had established a committee which was intended to develop a barcode for grocery industry. It also called bids for the same. Among the participated companies in the bidding process, IBM was successful in winning the bid. George Laurer of IBM is the person who is responsible for the evolution of present day U.P.C symbology. This symbology consists of 12 characters, divided in to two halves each having 6 characters. Each digit in the symbology has specific information attached to it. The first digit is always zero. And the next five digits has information of the manufacturer. The digits 7 to 11, represent the SKU ot the product number. The last digit is very important and is known as check digit, whose purpose is used to check whether the code is read correctly. The U.P.C barcodes are very easy to read and easily printed. The NAFC has announced the U.P.C symbology as their standard. Kepping the furture industry requirements in mind, the IBM had successfully designed other five versions of U.P.C symbology – UPC A, B, C, D and E.
Later, in 1991, Tippecanoe Systems Inc. ahd introduced the bars and stripes form of barcodes, which has become very popular among the all the industries. In June of 1974, the first U.P.C. scanner has read the U.P.C barcode on Wrigley’s Chewing gum.
The modern applications of the barcodes are in hospital patients where barcode ID bracelets, codes appear on truck parts, business documents, shipping cartons, marathon runners, etc. Airlines use an IATA standard 2D barcode on boarding passes. Some 2D barcodes are embedded with a hyperlink to a web page, they are widely used in shop floor control applications software where employees can scan work orders and track the time spent on a job.
