Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of the Bar Code

Integral to the U.P.C.’s success are its flexibility—usable on myriad surfaces—and the foresight of the people who decided to design it with the capacity to identify millions of unique items. Although the range of its use today was not envisioned in 1974, when supermarkets carried a fraction of the inventory they carry today, the U.P.C. nevertheless accommodates the creation each year of tens of thousands of new products.