Coming April 3rd -- the 33rd Anniversary of the Universal Product Code Adoption

It's a good thing isn't it to pay homage from time to time to what and whom came before us... to those people and events that got us here? April 3, 1973 -- almost 33 years ago -- is one of those dates and times. It's the day the UPC was adopted as an industry standard. It's all in this interesting backgrounder on the history of barcodes. Good long weekend reading.

With any luck, this link will take you to the front page of the barcode patent aplication filed in 1949. If you can read and see this stuff and not have an appreciation for how far the industry has come... well... I'm sorry about that. I'm from an age when every item in a grocery cart was priced by hand and keyed into the register one at a time, by hand, often incorrectly. It took hours just to buy groceries...