Cashiers at a Marsh supermarket in Ohio scanned the world's very first universal product code in 1974, testing the groundbreaking laser technology on a perfectly ordinary ten-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

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Cashiers at a Marsh supermarket in Ohio scanned the world's very first universal product code in 1974, testing the groundbreaking laser technology on a perfectly ordinary ten-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. After years of complicated optical engineering and logistical planning to revolutionize global retail inventory, the very first item to be aggressively beeped through a register was a cheap pack of artificially flavored gum that loses its taste after approximately three minutes of chewing. This mundane purchase officially marked the dawn of the automated checkout era, forever changing global commerce and directly paving the way for those incredibly frustrating self-checkout machines that endlessly accuse you of placing an unexpected item in the bagging area. That single pack of gum is now proudly displayed in the Smithsonian, eternally memorializing the exact moment human cashiers began their slow march toward technological obsolescence