Today on October 7th, Google seems to be honoring Woodland and Silver to whom the following patent, was issued in 1952 for their barcode invention which is widely used all over the world to clasify, sort and quickly search for any particular item in the inventory, en example of this technology can be found at any major supermarket.

A more expensive technology on a rise is RFID which is radio-frequency identification. The major advantage is that it's not always easy and effecient to scan and re-scan barcoded items, with the use of RFID an item can be identified from a distance without too much effort. The down side the is that this technology is much more expensive to implement.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID