October 20, 2026: The Lines That Changed the Aisles

An engineer sitting on a Florida beach in 1948 dragged his fingers through the sand and sketched an idea nobody would know what to do with for twenty five years.

On October 20, 1949, Norman Joseph Woodland and classmate Bernard Silver filed a patent for a machine-readable barcode, inspired by Morse code Woodland had learned as a Boy Scout, but the technology to actually use it didn't exist yet. The pair sold the patent to Philco for fifteen thousand dollars in 1962, and it eventually passed to RCA, where it sat largely unused until IBM engineer George Laurer redesigned it into the rectangular Universal Product Code still used today.

On June 26, 1974, a cashier at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio scanned a pack of Wrigley's gum, the first product in history rung up with a working barcode system, a quarter century after the idea began as a doodle in wet sand.

This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world.

Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe.

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