Today marks the 57th anniversary of the first patent of the barcode. It was patented by Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, who sold the patent before the industry standard UPC ever took off. The Telegraph has a nice history piece here as does HowStuffworks.

Personally, I couldn't believe that the bar code was invented soooo long ago and that it's still in such wide use today. And what's more, the concept for the bar code has been adopted by modern technologies, such as RFID tags, pet microchipping and location-tracking technology for streamlining supply chains.

To mark the anniversary, Google's search page has it's name in bar code type. You can do the same and generate your own barcode by clicking on the link.