From a simple idea to an industry standard. Happy 40th birthday to the humble barcode!

That simple barcode has revolutionised many industries since that day in an Ohio supermarket. However, it was actually invented 20 years earlier.

The black and white symbol was originally invented by two graduate students, Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland which was patented in 1952. The adoption of the new technology was slow as retailers were unsure of its accuracy. By 1978 less than one percent of grocery stores across the United Sates used bar code scanners. It wasn’t until the 80’s when the barcode finally took its place amongst retailers, manufactures and airports.

Today the barcode takes many forms, our favourite of course, is the DPID barcode. The delivery point identifier (DPID) is a unique barcode assigned to every address in Australia. So next time you receive a bill in the mail, check out your house’s unique barcode on the letter.