Classifying Apparatus and Method

U.S. Patent 2,612,994 · 1952

Inventors: Norman J. Woodland, Bernard Silver
Assignee: (none assigned at issue; later assigned to Philco/RCA)
Filed: 1952

From the abstract

This invention relates to the art of article classification and has particular relation to classification through the medium of identifying patterns... The pattern of identifying lines and spaces, when scanned by a beam of light, produces a series of electrical signals corresponding to the pattern.

Note

The barcode. Filed October 20, 1949; granted October 7, 1952. Woodland conceived the design on a Miami Beach as a graduate student — he traced four lines in the sand, drawing on Morse code's logic of dots and dashes. The original patent shows a bullseye (concentric circles), readable from any angle. The linear UPC code came later (Laurer, IBM, 1973). The first product scanned in a real store was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum, June 26, 1974, Marsh Supermarket, Troy, Ohio. The pack is in the Smithsonian.