text:  Well, the history of the barcode really stemmed from an opportunity to improve the speed of checkout at retail establishments in the U.S. And because before the barcode, as you and I may remember, you had to manually key in the price for every single item in a cash register, which was incredibly slow for the shopper. So the retail grocery industry got together and looked for ways to become more efficient and ultimately selected the UPC barcode and GS1 to administer the barcode.