A Very Short History of Bar Code

Which may or may not apply to RFID

Bar Code in the Stone Age

1970 - 1982 Saw Many Intra-Company Applications

Joe Woodland – 1949 patent

April 1973 – UPC Standard Adopted (US & Canada)

Obstacles – Chicken & Egg

Return on investment for the retailer required source marking by the manufacturer

It took 4.6 years for manufacturers to provide UPC symbols on 75% of pre-packaged items sold in supermarkets

Obstacles – Item Price Marking

Controversy over the removal of price stickers on individual items

Retail unions & consumer advocates

Unfavorable publicity about price errors at the point of sale

State and local legislation required item price marking

Obstacles - Superstition A Satanic plot -

666

666

This was a real book!

Analogous toRFID privacy concerns

Obstacles – Patent Litigation Bilgutay vs. Uniform Code Council Lawsuits between scanner

manufacturers Lemelson vs. end user companies

$1,500,000,000 collected in license fees 2001 - Symbol Technologies & others filed

suit against Lemelson 2004 - Federal court declares Lemelson

claims invalid and unenforceable

Number of scanning stores in the US & Canada

Cumulative # Scanning Stores

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984

Year

Co

un

t

0 6 45 111 210 432

Positive publicity - 1978

Fortune Magazine Wall Street Journal

Positive publicity - 1982

Fortune Magazine

Other Significant Bar Code Mandates

1983/4

US DOD US Automobile Industry

These mandates together with UPC and EAN sharply accelerated market growth.

Subsequent Progress

Bar code replaced OCR in fashion retail

International Symbology Standards Verification developed & standardized 2 dimensional bar codes Ultimately bar code spread world

wide to every facet of retail, distribution, and manufacturing

RFID – my opinion

RFID will take root and flourish, not by replacing bar code, but by solving those problems wherein it provides the superior solution.