Barcodes. It's hard to imagine a world without them.
These little black and white lines have been making our lives easier for decades.
We never really give them a second thought, but that's the whole point.
Barcodes are designed to handle all kinds of complex information so we don't have to.
Most of us associate barcodes with the checkout line at the store,
but we also use them for tracking our package deliveries,
sharing information on the go, and so much more.
By the mid 1970s, computers were becoming powerful enough
to make this technology practical for everyday use.
But the first barcode actually got its start more than a decade earlier.
It wasn't found on store shelves.
It wasn't even used by the general public.
It was actually trying to solve a much more specific problem.
From the 1950s into the 60s, Americans were in the midst of an economic boom.
Incomes were high, gas prices were low,
and technology was advancing at an incredible pace.
Many industries are thriving, but one of them was struggling to survive
the railroads.
The years following World War II had left them worn down and financially gutted.
While passenger trains had once been the most popular way
to travel in the US, that business was quickly evaporating.
But Americans are traveling more than ever before.
The airline industry was growing exponentially.
Flights were becoming more affordable, and travelers
could go anywhere in the country in a matter of hours.
Meanwhile, President Eisenhower introduced a new Interstate Highway system.
This made cross-country travel more accessible,
using a network of roads designed for speed and convenience.
American car culture was in full force.
Millions were getting hooked, and they weren't looking back.
As a result, the romance of train travel was quickly forgotten.
More and more seats became empty.
Schedules were canceled.
Stations were practically abandoned.
The railroads had lost a huge portion of their revenue,
and many of them were forced into bankruptcy.
Some managed to survive by refocusing their business on freight instead.
As this shift was happening, and the world was becoming more advanced,
one of the industry's oldest unsolved problems was becoming more apparent.
Over a million freight cars were moving back and forth across the country every day,
but the railroads didn't have any good way of keeping track of where they were.
in a single long distance trip, freight cars were stopped and reorganized several times,
and they changed hands between multiple railroads in the process.
The only way to track their location was to stop the whole train,
manually write down every car's serial number by hand,
and then log this information with punch cards.
Needless to say, this process was incredibly slow, inefficient, and prone to human error.
Shipments were often misplaced, and customers were not happy.
In the mid 1950s, a young college student named David Collins
was spending his summers working for the Pennsylvania railroad.
It didn't take long for him to notice that freight cars
were very hard to keep track of.
Collins knew this wasn't a sustainable way to do business,
but he was pursuing a degree in civil engineering,
so this was just the sort of puzzle to catch his interest.
The company was the industry leader at the time.
So how was it that even they weren't immune to this issue?
Collins researched the problem in his spare time,
but eventually he set it aside as he continued his education.
A few years later, in 1959, Collins graduated from MIT
with a master's degree in Industrial Management.
That fall, he landed a job with Sylvania,
located in Waltham, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.
Sylvania was a household name for a variety of products,
including televisions, vacuum tubes and flash bulbs.
The company had also been working
on electronics for industrial and military applications.
Collins was hired on to Sylvania's Electronic Systems Division.
This was a research and development lab where the company was testing
new technologies, like digital pattern recognition.
The division was looking for a new project for their industrial scale computers,
and Collins chimed in with an idea.
He explained the problem he had witnessed during those Pennsylvania summers,
and suggested that they use these computers to automatically track the location of railcars.
Seeing the business potential for this idea,
his management approved the project and put him in charge.
Just like that,Collins was given access to dozens of research engineers
and some of the best computer technology of the time.
Collins and his team began holding meetings with railroad companies,
learning about their specific needs and developing
a new system to best serve their business.
The companies wanted to track their cars without needing the trains to be stopped.
Instead, the system would need to work while trains were moving,
even as fast as 60 miles per hour.
And since rail cars were subjected to a variety of climates and weather conditions,
they also needed something resilient that could withstand the elements.
Most importantly, it had to be financially practical and scalable,
With some fleets numbering in the tens of thousands,
the system couldn't cost more than about a dollar per car.
With these specs in mind, Collins' team spent the next year
exploring several different technologies.
By the end of 1960, they settled on using light scanners,
and a series of bars that could be read electronically.
Each car would have a barcode of 13 labels,
which were made from Scotchlite reflective material, produced by 3M.
The labels had unique color coding to represent different digits.
The scanner was resilient to weather, vibrations, and tampering,
and would turn on automatically whenever a train would approach.
In a quick sweep of light, each car's label was scanned from bottom to top.
The first four digits were used to identify the company that owned the car.
Another six digits identified that specific car's serial number.
As the light reflected off the labels,
it bounced back into the scanner, and was then decoded as numerical digits.
All of this data was sent to a specialized console
where the entire train's data was printed out.
What used to be a long and tedious process could now
be done automatically in a matter of seconds.
This innovation was the first of its kind.
But unbeknownst to the team,
a similar idea had actually been proposed more than a decade earlier.
Two engineering students, Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland,
filed the first patent for an optically scanned black and white barcode in 1949.
Their solution was proposed for the grocery industry,
as stores were looking for a way to automatically track their inventory
and speed up checkout lines.
Silver & Woodland pitched their concept to IBM in the early 50s.
But while IBM saw promise in the idea,
the computers at the time simply couldn't make it practical.
They had no choice but to wait for the technology to catch up with their vision.
Now almost a decade later,
the Sylvania engineers had come up with their own optical scanners,
and this time, technology was on their side.
By March of 1961, the scanning system was ready to leave the lab and begin field testing.
It was also given a name, Kartrak ACI, or Automatic Car Identification.
The team partnered with the Boston & Maine Railroad to install the first scanners and labels.
The B&M was a natural choice, partially because they were a local company.
The first scanner was installed in Woburn, Massachusetts,
just down the road from Sylvania's lab in Waltham.
The B&M also offered both commuter service and freight operations.
This was important, as it would allow Kartrak to be tested
in both of these settings at once.
Better yet, the B&M's gravel trains stayed on a predictable route,
which would help keep the test controlled while the team worked out
the kinks in the system.
Perhaps in a bit of poetic justice, the gravel was being carried
for the construction of Interstate 93 in New Hampshire.
The new highways had posed a threat to the railroad business,
but now Sylvania was using these shipments to help the industry modernize itself.
Testing on the Boston & Maine proved very successful over the next couple of years,
and soon Kartrak was ready to hit the market.
During this time, however, other groups had started jumping on the bandwagon
and were developing their own competing products.
These used a wide range of technologies, from magnetic coding to TV cameras.
The Sylvania team was determined to beat out the competition,
so they focused on marketing Kartrak to smaller railroads
with predictable operations, similar to the B&M.
The strategy paid off, and by 1966, they had sold the system to 20 railroads,
with more than 50,000 railcars being labeled and scanned across the country.
This was an impressive feat and helped establish their position on the market.
But Collins knew the potential for success was far greater.
While they had made about $200,000 so far,
their studies showed that the US railroads had a market potential of $25 million.
And if Kartrak could be adapted to other industries as well,
that potential could grow to $58 million
The opportunity was immense, but getting there would not be easy.
Many railroads were cautious to buy into the new technology.
They had seen enough competitors making big promises,
and then delaying their products year after year.
To help establish their credibility, Sylvania published a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal,
with the promise of saving the industry $3 billion.
Their plan was to offer Kartrak as a kind of subscription service.
Sylvania would lease the scanners and barcodes,
take care of the ongoing maintenance, and manage all of the data.
All the railroad had to do was pay an ongoing rate for the service.
This proposal was also sent directly to the presidents of the top 20 railroads,
who collectively owned 75% of the rail cars in the industry.
This aggressive campaign drummed up more interest in Kartrak,
but there was one detail tripping them up.
The companies hesitated to let Sylvania handle all of their data.
They wanted to be able to control it themselves.
So the business model was adjusted.
Sylvania would sell its barcodes and scanners at a one-time cost.
Companies would be responsible for installing and maintaining their own systems,
but they would also have full control over their data.
At this same time, the Association of American Railroads
had taken notice of all the automatic tracking systems coming onto the market.
This group was responsible for defining many of the industry's standard practices,
and they knew a solution would only make sense on a national scale if it was standardized.
The AAR asked for proposals from Sylvania and several of their competitors,
including big names like GE and RCA.
Fortunately, Sylvania had the upper hand.
Many of their competitors are proposing technologies that weren't ready for the market yet.
But Kartrak had already been installed on several railroads and was proving successful.
Unsurprisingly, it was among the finalists selected for field testing.
Now it would go head-to-head against two competitors.
Abex had developed a system that transmitted radiated
microwave beams to ID plates on each car.
Wabco had a black and white barcode system that was similar to a Kartrak,
although the company had also been exploring options like magnets and infrared radiation.
The head-to-head field test took place over the course of a year, starting in 1966.
Coincidentally, this was carried out on the Pennsylvania Railroad,
where Collins had first been inspired to solve this problem a decade earlier.
On October 10, 1967, the ARR announced that Kartrak would become the new industry standard.
All of the nation's largest railroads would now be required
to install these barcodes on their one point eight million freight cars.
Collins and Sylvania couldn't have dreamed of a better outcome.
Not only had their product beat out dozens of competitors,
but they had also claimed nearly the entire market.
Always the innovator, Collins knew this victory was only the beginning.
The world had so many more problems to solve, and he had already
been thinking of ways to adapt Kartrak to other industries.
The concept could easily be carried over to trucking companies and shipping containers.
But there were other potential applications as well,
like trucking cars, untold highways.
However, Sylvania didn't think all this was necessary.
They had just won out the huge contract for the rail industry,
and they didn't want to shift their focus so quickly.
Feeling that his creativity was being stifled, Collins resigned from Sylvania in 1968.
He founded the Computer Identics Corporation with his colleague, Chris Kapsambelis,
who had been instrumental to the development of Kartrak.
With their new company they were free to explore all kinds of new technologies.
They immediately developed the first laser scanner,
which would become a standard for decades to come.
In 1969, they secured a deal with General Motors
to implement the first automated laser scanners for assembly lines,
a revolution for manufacturing.
That same year, they partnered with the General Trading Company
to develop the first scanners to be used for package recognition.
Meanwhile, barcodes were finally starting to be developed
more seriously for the grocery industry.
RCA was testing a bullseye design based on the old Silver/Woodland patent,
and Kroger was happy to offer its stores as the pioneering testing ground.
Widespread use would still be many years off,
but the barcode industry was slowly taking shape.
The 1960s may have been hard on American railroads, but the 70s were rock bottom.
Regulations were a mess, revenue was scarce,
and a quarter of the industry had gone bankrupt.
With the railroads no longer able to sustain passenger service,
the federal government had to step in.
They created Amtrak in 1971 to ensure Americans could always have
some basic level of passenger service, regardless of whether it was profitable.
The freight business wasn't doing much better,
and in fact, it was heading in a similar direction.
Morale was low, and budgets were even lower.
By 1973, Kartrak had been a standard in the industry for six years.
The rollout had been slower than expected,
but barcodes had been installed on 95% of railcars across the US.
By the numbers, the system had been a huge success.
But this didn't tell the whole story,
as the railroads were experiencing a different reality.
The barcodes were supposed to withstand harsh climates,
but snow, dirt, and other debris were damaging the labels and making them unreadable.
This wasn't entirely Kartrak's fault though, as the railroads knew
the barcodes needed at least some maintenance.
But given the dismal landscape of the industry,
they weren't exactly thrilled to pay the upkeep costs.
The companies were focused on their financial survival,
and every dollar had to be used wisely.
Without this maintenance taking place,
soon, one in five cars weren't being scanned correctly.
As the errors stacked up, so did the automated print-outs.
As the information became less and less accurate,
the office clerks started ignoring the mountain of paperwork.
It simply wasn't worth their time.
One of the largest railroads, Southern Pacific,
decided to take matters into its own hands.
By 1975, their executives were convinced
that Kartrak was no longer valuable to their business,
And they urged the ARR to reverse their decision.
Meanwhile, they instructed their employees to stop any further maintenance of the barcodes.
The AAR recognized these issues and decided to continue the Kartrak standard for another two years,
but it would no longer be required.
Southern Pacific had a lot of influence in the industry,
and it didn't take long for word to spread.
Many railroads followed suit and stopped maintaining their barcodes.
Major players like Southern Pacific and Missouri Pacific
also began offering their own computer-based scheduling systems.
Not only were these more advanced than Kartrak,
they didn't rely on the hassle of maintaining labels.
Finally, in November of 1977, the ARR officially voted to end the Kartrak standard.
A full ten years had passed, and the optimism of the late 60s now felt like a distant memory.
The same group who had given Kartrak such a bright future
had now put the final nail in its coffin.
When all was said and done, the industry spent about $150 million on the Kartrak project.
Sylvania had originally projected that more than 10,000 scanners would be installed across the country.
But in the end, this only amounted to about 400.
While the system ultimately failed to catch on, it proved to be influential in many ways.
The experiment was the first of its kind,
taking barcode technology outside of the lab and putting it to work in the real world.
It proved that optical scanners could be a successful business, at least under the right conditions.
Around the same time that Kartrak was dying out,
the grocery industry was finally hitting the ground running with its own barcodes.
George Laurer at IBM had developed the Universal Product Code, or UPC,
which was eventually selected as the industry standard.
The first UPC was ceremoniously scanned on June 26, 1974,
and it's been incredibly successful ever since.
David Collins is still active in the business world today,
and serves in a variety of consulting roles.
In 2011, he received Congressional recognition
as the father of the barcode industry.
Thanks to his innovation and foresight,
our global economy runs more efficiently than ever.
It's estimated that well over 12 billion barcodes
are scanned every day across hundreds of industries.
After the Kartrak debacle, the railroads didn't look for a replacement for several years.
The failing industry was finally saved in 1980.
The federal government stripped away its outdated regulations,
allowing business to start prospering again.
In the late 80s, Burlington Northern started testing radio frequency ID tags.
This time, the tags contained each car's information electronically.
The system was connected to a vast computer network,
and it was more than 99% reliable.
RFID tags became the new industry standard in 1991,
and they're still used to this day.
Kartrak barcodes are a rare sight today,
but they can still be found if you look carefully.
In the end, the system may have been the victim of the industry it was meant to serve.
But it's a humbling reminder that our failures,
even the big ones, don't have to be the end of the story.
Sometimes progress requires us to make some mistakes along the way,
because those can guide us toward a better tomorrow.