We here at RACO Industries are celebrating a special anniversary this week: the 35th anniversary of the first bar code scanning. On June 26th, 1974, at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum was the first item ever scanned in a commercial environment and inventory management has never been the same. Recently, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Steve Overmyer, Marsh’s original project coordinator that helped the store’s transition from manual check-out stations to electronic scanning.
It’s easy to tell how fondly he looks back at that challenge. As you can imagine, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. On the first day the scanners were operating, the store lost power. Naturally, everyone was quick to blame all the new devices. But as it turned out, a truck driving behind the store pulled down the power line. Even with this issue, the store’s staff was able to keep scanning products.
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