The UPC Barcode: How a Pack of Gum Changed Retail

The UPC barcode history hinges on a single, almost comically ordinary moment: on a June morning in 1974, a cashier in Ohio scanned a pack of chewing gum, and modern retail was never the same. That beep was the sound of an entire industry stepping into the computer age. 🐾

What is the UPC barcode?

The Universal Product Code, or UPC, is the familiar pattern of black stripes and a 12-digit number printed on nearly every packaged product sold in North America. It is a one-dimensional barcode: the information lives in the varying widths of the bars and the spaces between them.

When a scanner reads those stripes, it does not see a price. It sees a number, which the store's computer looks up in a database to find the product's name and current price. That simple split between the code and the data behind it is what makes the whole system so powerful. For the mechanics, see how barcode scanners work.

Who created the UPC?

The UPC symbol was developed by George Laurer, an engineer at IBM, in the early 1970s. The grocery industry had formed a committee to choose a standard code for automatic checkout, and it evaluated several competing designs, including the older bullseye pattern first patented by Woodland and Silver in 1952.

Laurer's rectangular design of parallel bars won out because it printed more reliably. The circular bullseye tended to smear during high-speed printing, blurring into an unreadable smudge, while the linear UPC stayed crisp. You can read the earlier chapter of this story in our brief history of the barcode.

What actually happened in Troy, Ohio?

The first real-world UPC scan took place on June 26, 1974, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The item pulled across the scanner was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum.

The gum was not chosen for any grand symbolic reason. It simply happened to be one of the first items scanned as the new system went live, and it has been remembered ever since as the product that opened the barcode era.

That pack of gum is now a piece of retail history, and the moment marked the transition from a decades-old idea into a working, everyday reality. The barcode had waited more than twenty years for the technology around it to catch up.

Why did retailers want the UPC so badly?

Before scanning, running a supermarket was a manual grind. Every item needed an individual price sticker, cashiers keyed in each price by hand, and inventory was counted by eye. The UPC promised to fix all of it at once.

• Faster checkouts. Scanning was quicker and far more accurate than typing prices.
• Fewer errors. The computer, not the cashier's memory, held the correct price.
• No more sticker guns. Prices could be updated centrally instead of relabelling every can.
• Live inventory. Each scan updated stock counts automatically.

The upfront cost was significant, and adoption was slow at first. Scanners were expensive, and the benefits only appeared once enough products carried the code. But the logic was irresistible, and the system reached critical mass over the following years.

How did the UPC transform retail and inventory?

The UPC did far more than speed up the checkout line. By turning every product into a piece of data, it gave retailers a nervous system they had never had before.

Function	Before UPC	After UPC
Pricing	Sticker on each item	Central price database
Checkout speed	Manual key entry	Instant scan
Stock tracking	Periodic hand counts	Continuous, automatic
Sales data	Rough estimates	Item-level detail

With detailed sales data flowing in, stores could see exactly what sold and when. This fed smarter reordering, tighter supply chains and, eventually, the just-in-time logistics that underpin modern retail. The barcode became the foundation of a data-driven industry.

How do UPCs stay unique around the world?

For scanning to work across thousands of manufacturers and retailers, every product needs a genuinely unique number. That coordination is handled by a global standards body, now known as GS1, which assigns company prefixes so that no two products collide.

The 12-digit UPC also includes a check digit, a final number calculated from the others, so a scanner can instantly detect most misreads. We cover this ecosystem in GS1 barcode standards, and the broader family of stripes in 1D vs 2D barcodes.

What is the UPC's lasting legacy?

The UPC proved that machine-readable codes could reshape an entire industry, and its success paved the way for everything that followed. As businesses wanted to store more than a simple product number, engineers pushed into two dimensions, producing the codes explored in the history of 2D barcodes and ultimately the QR code.

Today's QR codes are the spiritual descendants of that pack of gum in Troy. They carry far more data, but they share the same core idea: turn information into a pattern a machine can read in an instant. You can create a free QR code to see how far the concept has come, or read the history of the QR code for the next chapter.

Frequently asked questions

What was the first item scanned with a UPC barcode?

A 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum, scanned on June 26, 1974, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Who invented the UPC?

George Laurer developed the UPC symbol at IBM in the early 1970s, building on earlier barcode concepts from Woodland and Silver.

Why did the UPC beat the bullseye barcode?

The rectangular UPC printed more reliably. The circular bullseye tended to smear during printing and become unreadable, while the linear bars stayed crisp.

Does a barcode contain the product's price?

No. The barcode holds only a number. The store's computer looks that number up in a database to find the product and its current price.

What is the check digit on a UPC?

It is the final digit, calculated from the others, which lets a scanner detect most misreads and reject a bad scan.