The path of getting back on the barcode feet was long and thorny. Almost four decades passed from the moment the first ideas were born to the introduction of technology to the masses.

Brief historical excursion

The history of barcodes goes back to 1932. During this difficult period of the Great Depression, American student Wallace Flint published basic theses, which described the operation of the perfect supermarket of that time. Without going into details, punched cards were supposed to be used to automate trading processes. The technical implementation of the idea turned out to be difficult, so the idea was shelved until better times.

They returned to it again in 1948, when it was proposed to resort to UV ink for marking goods. The linear stroke was invented just a year later. Morse code and soundtrack technologies were used in its creation. Speaking in an accessible language, the sequence of dots and dashes was translated into dashed lines, and to read the information they appealed to the methods of film dubbing. This consisted in converting elements of various levels of transparency on the film into sound.

The newly minted technology was waiting in the wings until April 3, 1973 - it was on this day that the version of the UPC (Universal Product Code) was registered. A year later, with a small tail under the beam of the scanner on the cash register of the supermarket, the first heading was "pierced" - a package of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

Wrigley's Juicy Fruit was destined to be the first to have its barcode stamped on the store's cash register. It happened on June 26, 1974 at 8 o'clock in the morning.

You can still see it with your own eyes - a pack of chewing gum is presented to the public in the museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Our days

In modern realities, more than 50 bar coding systems have been delivered to the conveyor. The most widely used codes are UPC and EAN (European coding system). In worldwide practice, 13-bit barcodes of the EAN-13 type are most often used. We will talk about them.

For greater clarity, let's take a look at the ins and outs of the barcode from the picture below.

A lot of useful information can be gleaned from the symbols under the graphic ruler of the barcode.

The first two or three digits in it indicate the code of the country where the trademark is registered. The next 4-5 characters carry information about the manufacturer. Five more digits describe the consumer properties of products:

  • 1. product name;
  • 2. consumer qualities;
  • 3. dimensions and weight;
  • 4. ingredients;
  • 5. color.

Finally, at the end there is always a checksum digit, which serves to verify that the scanner read the barcode correctly. It is also an indicator of the authenticity of the product.

The checksum is calculated by simple mathematical manipulations in six simple steps:

  • 1. Addition of numbers in even places (9 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 3 + 5 = 22).
  • 2. Multiplying the resulting amount by 3 (22 ⋅ 3 = 66).
  • 3. Addition of numbers in odd places (5 + 0 + 2 + 4 + 2 + 4 = 17).
  • 4. Addition of numbers in paragraphs 2 and 3 (66 + 17 = 83).
  • 5. Discarding tens (we remove the first digit from the number 83 and get 3).
  • 6. The figure obtained in paragraph 5 is subtracted from the number 10 (10 - 3 = 7).

Thus, you can check the authenticity of a commodity item yourself, armed with a conventional calculator.

There are three main types of EAN codes:

  • international - applied on a global scale;
  • national - used within the same country;
  • local - within the framework of the management system of a single trade enterprise.

For commodity items of large sizes, a simplified EAN-8 coding system is sometimes used, which uses a short barcode of 8 characters in practice.

Imported goods enter the domestic market with barcodes, which can be used to identify the country of origin without much difficulty. Here are the most popular ones:

A list of country codes common in domestic latitudes, sorted by increasing numbers.

2D codes

A new stage in the development of font coding technology is two-dimensional codes designed to encode a large amount of data. The decoding of such a code is carried out in two dimensions - vertically and horizontally. They are known to the mass consumer, in particular, thanks to matrix QR codes.

Quick payment of utility bills is just one of the few use cases for QR codes.

Any QR code contains several obligatory elements: three large “squares” surrounded by empty space (using them the scanner programme determines the position of the code and corrects perspective distortion), as well as a smaller “square” (used to determine the orientation of service areas).

Using a QR code, you can take a train, quickly pay a receipt, get information about a tourist attraction, download a book or an application on a mobile gadget. There are a lot of scenarios for their use, and anyone can generate their own QR code. You just need to arm yourself with a special programme for your smartphone. It also serves as a QR code data reader using the camera.

Popular smartphones on the market

Articles

Articles are related product identifiers to barcodes . They have the form of an alphanumeric code, which contains information about the characteristics and technical equipment of the product. The article defines the type of commodity item, country of origin, country of supplier, color, size and other parameters.

A vivid example of the fact that the same product can be assigned under two dozen different articles that describe the differences in its equipment.

Articles are often used within individual enterprises with a large assortment of goods. From a practical point of view, they allow you to simplify the processes of accounting and searching for the right items in the warehouse. Also, a company with a separate article can introduce products of a different color or texture, which, in terms of their characteristics, no longer differ from analogues. Often these products come with a single barcode. The ins and outs of articles is a topic for a separate detailed material, so we will not delve into its study here.

Useful link. The article "How not to be mistaken - iPhone article numbers and their decoding" provides information about the differences in the model range of the latest generation of "apple" mobile gadgets according to the article code assigned directly by Apple.

Space for creativity

Faceless barcodes are sometimes quite difficult to fit into the concept of the external appearance of the product packaging. Therefore, some designers create creative pictures from them. This direction in design is called "Barcode art".

When a creative designer gets down to business, an ordinary barcode turns into an interesting drawing.

Creativity does not prevent scanners from reading the code and pleases the eyes of consumers. Agree, the originally designed barcode looks at least more pleasing from an aesthetic point of view than an ordinary "square" with black and white stripes, carelessly placed on the packaging of commercial products.