What was the first product to have a barcode scanned in a supermarket, in 1974?

The first product to have a barcode scanned in a supermarket, in 1974, was Wrigley’s gum.

More precisely, it was a 10-pack containing 50 sticks of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. On June 26, 1974, a shopper bought it at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, where an NCR checkout system made the historic scan at 8:01 a.m. The register recorded a price of 67 cents.

The item was not selected because gum was technologically special. Its packaging simply carried a correctly printed Universal Product Code, while many other products in the cart also had barcodes. The gum was the first item lifted for scanning, making it the first successful retail UPC transaction.

The UPC system had been selected as a grocery-industry standard in 1973. Its 12-digit structure identifies products and includes a check digit to help catch scanning or typing errors. A facsimile of the famous gum packet is now displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.