University of Mississippi eGrove Touche Ross Publications Deloitte Collection 1974 Case for the readable code David L. Fleisher Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/dl_tr Part of the Accounting Commons, and the Taxation Commons Recommended Citation Tempo, Vol. 20, no. 1 (1974), p. 42-47 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Deloitte Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Touche Ross Publications by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. How does the new UPC system work? The Case for the Readable Code By DAVID L. FLEISHER / National Director, Retailing Services, St. Louis The housewife will soon be noticing some unusual changes progress was made. The committee, comprised of eight when she visits the local supermarket. Product labels will food retailers/distributors and eight manufacturers, spear- not be marked with the price; instead, the price will appear headed a 30-month effort that culminated on April 3,1973, on the shelf on which the product is found. When the cus- with the adoption of a machine-readable symbol—the last tomer reaches the checkout lane, she will not hear the step required to establish the UPC program. The program's noise of keys being punched on a mechanical cash register. main features include: Instead, the checker will pass each item across a slot in the A numbering system consisting of 10 digits to identify checkout counter, and the price will appear instantly on each product. The first five digits identify the manufac- the display screen of an electronic po/n£-of-sa/e terminal.