What are you doing during this post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas time period? Did I hear the words shopping, shopping and more shopping? Did you know that the first shopping mall was the Country Club Plaza, founded by the J.C. Nichols Company and opened near Kansas City, Mo., in 1922? Or that Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping cart in 1936? And that in 1884, James Ritty invented what was nicknamed the "Incorruptible Cashier" or the first working, mechanical cash register? What about the fact that the first bar code type product could be described as a "bull's eye" symbol, made up of a series of concentric circles? (USPTO Drawing of first bar code)