Forty years ago Thursday, the purchase of a 67-cent (U.S.) package of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, received what may have seemed like an undue amount of attention. With ...

Few objects in the world are more immediately recognizable than the bar code. After all, bar codes are all around us. They’re on the books we buy and the packages that land on our doorsteps. More than ...

In the wake of 2008 product scares involving melamine-tainted pet foods, lead-tainted toys, and melamine-tainted milk products, all originating in China, consumers in the U.S. understandably became ...

George Laurer had no idea his design would reach well beyond retail outlets when he created the black line and number sets known as the modern bar code while working for IBM as an engineer. Forty ...