Bar code Labels

Introduction

Barcode labels are a ubiquitous part of everyday life. Almost all product packages, important documents, passports, tickets, and other items are stamped with a small square containing a series of wide and narrow lines. Barcodes are used to keep track of information, to inventory items, and for security purposes. Almost all modern consumer goods have a barcode attached to them, making the barcode one of the most familiar pieces of technology known to man.

History of the Barcode

In 1948 in the United States, grocers were looking for a way to inventory items and to record information about what was being purchased in check out lines. Two young students named Bernard Silver and Joseph Woodland decided to tackle the problem, first using ultraviolet dyes to mark items. This method, however, proved to be too inefficient and expensive to implement commercially. Woodland investigated other methods of encoding data and drew inspiration from Morse code, which uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. In a stroke of genius, while sitting on the beach and drawing Morse code symbols in the sand, Woodland noticed that if he were to extend the dashes and dots vertically to form a series of thin and thick lines, he could develop a viable system that could solve the problem. Soon after in 1952, Woodland and Silver were awarded a patent on the printing of the code as well as the optical reading devices, marking the beginning of the modern barcode.

At first, the barcode was not successful and had limited use in commercial applications, being relegated to marking freight cars in train yards. The optical scanners and printing devices of the time were crude and not always reliable as trains moved quickly across the tracks. It was not until better technology allowed for better reading devices that barcodes became universally common as in today's world.

How Barcode Stickers Work

Barcodes work on the principle of representing numbers in binary code. Binary is a method of counting which uses a series of 1s and 0s to represent different numbers. In a barcode, lines and spaces are used to symbolize 1s and 0s, allowing any number to be printed in the form of a series of lines and spaces. It is important to note that the size and the thickness of the lines, when taken as a whole, do not matter. It is the proportion of the lines relative to the spaces that indicates a number. This allows barcodes to be scaled larger or smaller, depending on the printing and packaging, without changing the data that they carry. Along with the printed barcode, a scanning device is necessary to read the data, which is then sent to a computer to translate the code into useful information. Most scanning devices are either laser or camera driven. Scanners can be stationary like in supermarket checkout lines or hand held as in pricing guns that are designed to be portable and used for taking inventory on store shelves. Depending on the printing process, scanners have the ability to read barcodes from any angle or rotational orientation.

Types of Barcodes

There are many kind of barcodes that are used in industry today, but the two main subsets are linear barcodes and 2 dimensional (2D) bar codes. Linear barcodes are the typical set of lines and spaces that most people think about when someone mentions the term. 2D bar codes are different from linear bar codes in that they use an arrangement of shapes like dots, polygons, or patterns to encode data. 2D barcodes allow coders to store information horizontally and vertically, offering greater storage capacity than linear barcodes, which get longer as more information is packed into them. However, linear barcodes still have their advantages over 2D barcodes. For one, they are cheaper to produce. Next, since data is encodes along the height of the code, the barcode can be read if a portion of it gets damaged.

Applications of Barcodes

Barcode labels are used throughout the world today to keep track of objects. For example, freight companies use barcodes to provide information about the location and delivery of packages. Scientist use encoded labels to keep track of specimens and samples. Bar codes have even been implanted in humans and pets. Perhaps the most widespread use of the barcode label is the Universal Product Code or UPC, a system of tracking inventories and prices. The grocery industry in the United States pushed for the invention of the original barcode in order to keep track of their inventories and appropriately was responsible for the creation of the Universal Product Code more than 20 years later. Grocers were looking for ways to automate checkout lines in order to save money on hiring employees, so they encouraged product manufacturers to include UPC codes in the form of barcode labels to be placed on all packaging of commercial consumer goods. The addition of UPCs and barcodes to products did little to reduce labour costs, but did increase productivity and efficiency as supermarket checkers could process more people in a shorter amount of time. Eventually, other industries recognized the benefits of adding UPCs to their products. They could keep track of inventory, update prices from a central location by changing the pricing data attached to the code, process rebates more quickly, and gain invaluable insight into the spending habits of their customers. The UPC has now gained worldwide acceptance as is found on the packaging of almost all consumer goods sold throughout the world.

Conclusion

In a relatively short period of time, the barcode label has gone from an application used by a niche market to having universal, worldwide use. Barcode labels permeate everyday life and are now an integral part of our society. As printing and scanning technologies become more advanced and developed, the amount of data stored in a barcode label is likely to increase by orders of magnitude, which is sure to have long lasting implications for industry and consumers throughout the world.