Barcode
Norman Joseph Woodland and  Bernard Silver developed the modern barcode, and were granted a patent for it in 1952.  The idea was to make the checkout of articles easier, using a code which was inspired by Morse code.  In 1959, David Collins developed a system for tracking railroad carriages which used barcodes.  This system was unreliable, because of dirt on the barcodes.  In the 1970s, the system was abandoned, but in the 1980s, a similar system which used radio tags was introduced.