We take for granted how easy it is to scan a code and jump to a webpage – but it all started with the simple UPC. Barcode images from Wikipedia.

Bucklin, Randolph E., and Sunil Gupta. "Commercial Use of UPC Scanner Data: Industry and Academic Perspectives." Marketing Science 18, no. 3 (1999): 247–273.

It was while working as an electrical engineer with IBM that George Laurer fully developed the Universal Product Code (UPC), or barcode. He developed a scanner that could read codes digitally.