Birthday barcode

Barcodes have an incredibly important role in improving the way businesses capture and share information, as well as optimizing the movement of items along the supply chain. They are scanned with a 99.99% success rate. Barcodes were first used to label railroad cars so railroad companies could identify incoming trains and prevent them from colliding. The first product ever to be scanned bearing a UPC barcode was a packet of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum at Marsh’s store in Troy, Ohio, 8:01 June 26 1974.

The world's smallest barcode (printed at just 25 millimetres by 13 millimetres) was developed in the late 1980’s by Dr Stephen Buchmann, an entomologist at the Department of Agriculture’s at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona. Tiny barcodes were attached to bees to monitor their activities.