The U.P.C (Universal Product Code) was originally designed in 1974 to speed up grocery checkouts. The first live scan actually took place at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, when a cashier scanned a 10-pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum at checkout. The now ubiquitous black and white bars celebrated their 35 anniversary this past June. GS1 US, developer and administrator of the U.P.C. in the USA, celebrated this milestone with a huge UPC bar code decorated cake.
Since that first scan in June of 1974, the UPC changed the world of commerce forever. Nowadays the code consists of 59 machine readable bars and 12 digits that identify the item and it’s manufacturer. Over 25 industries have adopted the code as a standard and According to GS1 US there are about 5 billion scans a day.
