The first patent for a bar code type product (US Patent #2,612,994) was issued by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952. The Woodland and Silver barcode can be described as a "bull's eye" symbol, made up of a series of concentric circles. Barcode came in many shapes like rectangle and square, and later was developed as barcode labels. In 1948, Bernard Silver was a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia. A local food chain store owner had made an inquiry to the Drexel Institute asking about research into a method of automatically reading product information during checkout. Bernard Silver joined together with fellow graduate student Norman Joseph Woodland to work on a solution.

Today, with the rapid development of retail industry and consumer market, barcode business in China sees an upward trend for there is an increasing demand for barcode labels. In fact, bar code was first used commercially in 1966, however, it was soon realized that there would have to be some sort of industry standard set. By 1970, the Universal Grocery Products Identification Code or UGPIC was written by a company called Logicon Inc. The first company to produce bar code equipment for retail trade use (using UGPIC) was the American company Monarch Marking in 1970. Nowadays, bar code, automatic identification system and data acquisition technology still play such a significant role through the world.

Globally barcode scanning are used for each industry over a hundred million times every day like logistics, warehousing, library, bank, POS machine, medical care, retailing, apparels, food, hi-tech electronics, etc. We firmly believe that barcode undoubtedly assists us to enjoy more convenient life and save time. For example, it takes a great deal of time for workers to classify and search goods in logistics with several mistakes, which is against logistics’ management and development. But supported by barcode technology, it is easy for workers to operate and manage amount goods without mistake. In addition, industries like garments and food are likely to adopt barcode labels for they are easily attached and taken off.