The BBC has fascinating account of the role of the humble barcode in human progress. The barcode made its debut 25 years ago in Great Britain — just a year after the first bar code appeared in the United States.
The barcode is ubiquitous today and, as the BBC documents, has revolutionized retail stores. For example, the BBC interviews a consultant to supermarket chains who notes that in the early 1970s the average store only stocked a couple thousand different product lines. Today the average supermarket in Great Britain stocks 25,000 different product lines. The efficiencies gained by using bar codes for pricing changes and inventory made it possible to dramatically expand the goods that stores could profitably sell.
It is clear from the article that, at least in Great Britain, they also led to the much-demonized consolidation of supermarkets and the emergence of enormous chain stores. The improvements in supply chain management that barcodes allowed also increased the economies of scale and allowed giant supermarkets to pass on the savings to their customers.
Barcodes are also used in other businesses, including to track raw materials and products in factory settings. The BBC notes that experiments are under way to use radio tags that have pricing and other information embedded so that a box of corn flakes can ring itself up at the register automatically. There are also experiments under way to use small barcodes to tag produce and similar goods.
Ah, the sweet smell of progress.
Source:
In praise of the bar code. Mark Ward, BBC News, February 16, 2002.