With all the fuss surrounding the untimely demise of the King of Pop, Sneak is keen to point out we are forgetting to pay homage to the anniversary of one of the greatest events of our collective lifetime.

At exactly 8:06 am on 26 June 1974 at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first ever barcode was scanned. Yes, that's right, 35 years ago, almost to the day, history was made. Can you remember what you were doing at that time? It is one of those momentous events - Armstrong on the moon, Kennedy's assassination, the final of Big Brother 5 - that everyone surely remembers.

That famous first barcode, as we all know, was on a packet of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Who knew then that it would start a revolution?

Other equally memorable moments of the last 35 years of barcode history include, in 1980, the birth of Symbol's LS1000, the first handheld portable scanner.

In 1990, the same firm developed the Laser Radio Terminal 3800 (LRT3800), a light-weight portable unit combining barcode scanning, mobile computing and wireless communications.

And who could forget, in 1994, the Portable Pen Terminal 4100 (PPT 4100), the first pen-based handheld terminal with integrated scanning and wireless LAN technologies? Not I.

Now a part of Motorola, Symbol Technologies continues to push the boundaries of imaging and scanning innovation. God bless them one and all.