Kimball tag
More info
- Creator
- Kimball Company
- Type
- Machine-readable merchandise tag
The little punched-card tags on retail garments read by machine at the till — the barcode's predecessor in the shop.
The Kimball tag was a small perforated paper ticket attached to garments and other goods in clothing stores, its holes encoding item, size and price. At the sale the tag was torn off and read by a Kimball reader, or collected and run through a punched-card reader for stock accounting — a way to automate inventory long before the barcode.
The system, named after the American Kimball Company, was widespread in the fashion trade from the 1950s to the 70s. The barcode and later UPC eventually made the tag redundant, since a printed code is cheaper than a punched ticket and can be read straight off the packaging. The idea survives: a machine-readable identity on every item.