Universal Product Code barcodes have been in use for 50 years this summer, an op-ed by Retail Insider notes. The first one was scanned at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974. Within weeks, they had spread to Canada, where a Steinberg grocery store in Dorval, Que., rolled them out in July.
“The success of the UPC barcode owes much to the GS1 standards, set by a relatively unknown non-profit organization, which have been instrumental in enhancing the reliability of supply chains worldwide,” writes agriculture professor Sylvain Charlebois.
