<P> In the 1960s, railroads experimented with a multicolor barcode for tracking rail cars, but they eventually abandoned it . </P> <P> A group of grocery industry trade associations formed the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council which with consultants Larry Russell and Tom Wilson of McKinsey & Company, defined the numerical format of the Uniform Product Code . Technology firms including Charegon, IBM, Litton - Zellweger, Pitney Bowes - Alpex, Plessey - Anker, RCA, Scanner Inc., Singer, and Dymo Industries / Data General proposed alternative symbol representations to the council . In the end the Symbol Selection Committee chose to slightly modify, changing the font in the human readable area, the IBM proposal designed by George J. Laurer . </P> <P> The first UPC marked item ever scanned at a retail checkout was at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio at 8: 01 a.m. on June 26, 1974, and was a 10 - pack (50 sticks) of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum . The shopper was Clyde Dawson and cashier Sharon Buchanan made the first UPC scan . The NCR cash register rang up 67 cents . The entire shopping cart also had barcoded items in it, but the gum was the first one picked up . This item went on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. </P> <P> Around late 1969, IBM at Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina assigned George Laurer to determine how to make a supermarket scanner and label . In late 1970, Heard Baumeister provided equations to calculate characters per inch achievable by two IBM bar codes, Delta A and Delta B. In February, 1971, Baumeister joined Laurer . </P>

First ever product to be receive the ubiquitous universal product code (upc) barcode