Fifty seven years ago today, on October 7, 1952 to be exact, Joseph Woodland, Bernard Silver, and Jordin Johanson were granted a US Patent for the barcode.

Regarding the barcode, Wikipedia adds “In 1948 Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, overheard the president of a local food chain asking one of the deans to research a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friends Norman Joseph Woodland and Jordin Johanson about the request, and the three started working on a variety of systems.”

Although we haven’t seen an official Google statement yet, it’s probably safe to say that the barcode relates to Google, perhaps in numerical format. If you’re keeping track, this makes seven custom logos for Google in the last month which makes for some good water cooler conversation.