Brailes Mechanical & Craft Society – July 2026
Bar Codes – Lines that changed the world by Peter Jordan
Bar codes were part of our member Peter Jordan’s work at Banbury General Foods, later renamed Kraft International. Peter described how their development had far-reaching effects on both food manufacturing and retailing businesses.
Peter brought along one of his retirement presents. It was a framed bar code approximately 3feet by 2 feet, coded to say Maxwell House. His presentation used a coffee jar to illustrate the changes brought about by bar codes. He described how food retailing was transformed from the 1960’s to the present, with bar codes enabling much of that change. After his talk, he donated the jar of Maxwell House to the raffle.
Peter started his presentation with a photograph of the interior of a grocer’s shop before the introduction of technology. A member of staff in an apron served a customer at a counter. Each item was put on the counter and the amount due was added up by the shop assistant. The next development occurred in the 1960’s when self-service supermarkets began to open. Out-of-town supermarkets were built in the 1970’s. At this time there were no mobile phones or cheap computers. Queues at the tills were a regular feature. Every item had a price labelstuck on it. Getting a product onto the shelf was time consuming.
What are bar codes? They are machine readable code in the form of numbers and a pattern of parallel lines of varying widths, printed on packaging. At present the first three lines give the country of origin. Lines 4 and 5 are the company number, and the remainder identify the product. The concept was patented in the 1950’s, but it took until 1979 before low-cost computers enabled their first widespread use in the UK. Tesco were the first to establish computer links across their stores including their head office. Head office could see where theproducts were, in what quantity, and how many had been sold. In 1976 the ArticleNumbering Association was established. Their work is now done by GS1 in Brussels. They interact with around 2 million companies world- wide and ensure no duplications occur. Peter represented Kraft Foods on both these organisations.
The introduction of bar codes resulted in redundancies for many of the General Foods sales force. Previously, sales staff visited stores for orders. Tesco centralised the ordering process and from then their Head Office carried out this work. They followed this by building their own distribution centres. Shop delivery times are now controlled by the supermarket, cutting out manufacturers’ unpredictable delivery times.
Peter told us that next year quick response or QR codes will start to replace bar codes. Some products already have QR codes. These include numbers 1-9, the alphabet A-Z and special characters such as ?/!#. QR codes show much more information.
Our members asked some interesting questions and Stuart Cummings thanked Peter for his engaging talk.
Our next meeting is on Monday 6th July when David Freer talks about ‘Helping people to Eat– Shipston Food Bank’. We meet at 7 30 in the Village Hall. New members and guests are welcome.
We apologise for wrongly stating in last month’s Feldon that the Food Bank presentation would be in June.
Eric Darvell, Secretary