Happy birthday to the Universal Product Code, one of the world�s most recognized symbols

1975 – President Gerald Ford was in the White House, Bobby Unser won the Indy 500, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” received the Best Picture Oscar, the Cincinnati Reds beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, and on June 3, the Universal Product Code bar code symbol was born.

The 35th anniversary of the Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) bar code will be celebrated today by GS1 US, the developer and administrator of the U.P.C. for more than 200,000 businesses in the United States.

The organization will mark the event with a giant U.P.C. bar-coded birthday cake for more than 800 attendees at its annual U Connect Conference in Orlando.

One of the world’s best-known symbols, the U.P.C. comprises a row of 59 machine-readable black and white bars and 12 human-readable digits. Both the bars and the digits convey the same information: the identity of a specific product and its manufacturer.

U.P.C. timeline

• 1974: First live scan of a U.P.C. bar code; numbering system administered by Uniform Product Code Council (UPCC)
• 1978: Two-person office in Dayton, Ohio, was established to assign U.P.C. prefixes to companies
• 1980: 10,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
• 1983: UPCC adds Electronic Data Interchange standard to its portfolio
• 1984: Name shortened to Uniform Code Council (UCC)
• 1985: Introduction of U.P.C.s for use on coupons
• 1989: Introduction of first standard for shipping containers
• 1992: 100,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
• 1997: 200,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
• 1998: Introduction of global data synchronization and UCCnet Data Pool
• 2001: First U Connect Conference is held
• 2002: Acquisition of RosettaNet
• 2003: Formation of EPCglobal
• 2003: Appointed Manager of United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC)
• 2003: 300,000^th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
• 2005: GS1 US is created when UCC and EAN combine standards groups to form GS1; as part of GS1 family, GS1 US supports adoption and implementation of GS1 standards and provides services to subscribers
• 2005: UCCnet combines with Transora to form 1SYNC Data Pool
• 2008: Formation of GS1 Healthcare US
• 2009: GS1 US-supported FMI Product Recall Portal goes live

The Future…

• 2010: Sunrise dates for GS1 DataBar on loose produce and coupons in U.S.

retail and GS1 Global Location Numbers in U.S. healthcare

• 2012: Sunrise date for GS1 Global Trade Item Numbers in U.S. healthcare

Innovations in product identification: The U.P.C.’s success has inspired the creation of new ways to identify products for the benefit of consumers and industry:

• The newest bar code, GS1 DataBar, can be found increasingly on coupons and loose produce. On Jan. 1, 2010, its “sunrise date,” supermarkets will begin scanning and processing the GS1 DataBar, which can be configured in different formats to fit a smaller space or carry additional information, such as “best before” or expiration dates or lot numbers.
• GS1 Data Matrix, a bar code that resembles a random-patterned checkerboard, holds large amounts of data in a relatively small space as compared to traditional linear barcodes, and is becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of applications including aerospace, pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturing.
• The Electronic Product Code (EPC) carries information similar to that within a bar code, but is read by RFID technology without a direct sight line, rather than being scanned. The EPC also can carry and transmit additional information. In the retail environment, EPC can enable a checkout process that is nearly instantaneous.

Read the rest of the logisticsmgmt.com article here.