How do Barcodes work ?

Let's start from something which you would already be knowing. All Barcodes look similar - atleast when viewed from distance. They have the same alternating black and white lines (always). Plus there is one more similarity - there are exactly 95 lines of those.

accurate inventory counts translate to improved efficiency because they enable companies to establish more accurate delivery time estimates, a better definition of inventory costs, and a better price to market.

ALL Chinese barcodes start with an eight, because it is pronounced the same way as the word for "prosperity" and is considered to be a lucky number.

Leading inventory control software and warehouse management software solutions combine with barcode scanning software for increased functionality, such as providing reports to managers who need to determine which items sell best.

THE first barcode scanners were the size of a washing machine because they contained components that had to be water-cooled.

when the laser light falls on this set of parallel lines the white lines reflect most of the light while black lines don't. Now a computer can understand only two numbers - either 0 or 1. So it treats dark lines as 1s and white lines as os - ya it is not so intuitive, but it is so.

Companies also may establish reorder points to prompt orders for specific items when they reach a predetermined level. The tools and reports provided by barcode scanning systems help companies significantly reduce inventory carrying costs and improve customer service while saving time and money.

THE world's smallest barcode was developed by Dr Stephen Buchmann at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Centerin Arizona. Tiny tagsTINY: Tag on bee were attached to bees to monitor their mating habits - each line of the code was one thousandth of an inch wide

FIVE billion barcodes are scanned worldwide every day, according to the barcode monitor e-centre.

Using barcodes also helps companies save time. The majority of barcode scanners Barcode scannercome with computer programs that do not require manual writing and keyed entry. Thus, the data automatically updates the central database each time an employee scans a barcode.

The pattern for the right side is similar except that it has an even number of 1s. This helps the computer to figure out which side is left/right, in case the product has been turned upside down! There is one more check for this. All the codes for the left side begin with a 0 while those for the right side begin with a 1, leaving the guards.

Barcode labels and scanning systems play a pivotal role in increasing organizational efficiency. It is important that you understand when it makes the most sense to use barcodes in your business processes and which type of barcode scanning system is most appropriate for your situation so you can maximize their potential to reduce human error, conserve resources, save money, increase productivity, and save time.

BARCODE scanners work by picking up minute variations in the width of the black lines and the white gaps between them. The standard 13-digit barcode system can produce ten thousand billion unique codes.9 BARCODES were immortalised in art by New York pop artist Bernard Solco. His 1998 exhibition included 20 two-metre high paintings based on the black-and-white stripes.

THE first UK barcode was printed on a box of Melrose 100 Century teabags in 1978. The first UK store to have barcode scanners at the till was Key Markets in Spalding, Lincs, the following year

BARCODES have been the subject of satanic conspiracy theories. In her book The New Money System 666, published in 1982, author Mary Stewart Relfe claimed that barcodes secretly encode the number 666, which is the biblical "mark of the beast".

IN the early days, sunlight shining through windows at the front of stores prevented barcodes from being read.

Barcode labels and scanning systems play a pivotal role in increasing organizational efficiency. It is important that you understand when it makes the most sense to use barcodes in your business processes and which type of barcode scanning system is most appropriate for your situation so you can maximize their potential to reduce human error, conserve resources, save money, increase productivity, and save time.

WHEN barcodes were first introduced, wine makers refused to use them on labels because they said bottles were meant to be "table decoration".

THE average typist will make one mistake in 300 keystrokes. But the chance of a barcode error - where the data does not match the product scanned - is roughly one in a million.

A patent was issued in 1952 to Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland. Woodland conceptualized the standard barcode you know today by visualizing Morse Code dots stretched into lines. He was at the beach that day, and created the first barcode by drawing the lines in the sand.

JAPAN has the most barcode scanning stores per head of population. A barcode fashion craze swept the country in 1997 with more than a million Tokyo high school girls getting temporary tattoos in the shape of a barcode.

IN August 1994, Poetry Review carried a poem consisting entirely of barcode fragments. Poet Farquharson Cairns claimed it was "machine-readable".

THE US army uses 2ft-long barcodes to label 50ft boats which are in storage at its West Point military academy in New York. These huge barcodes store information about the boats' previous travels.

A NUMBER of ballot papers had to be scrapped in London's mayoral elections earlier this month after officials accidentally tore through a crucial barcode when they handed voting papers to electors.

TWO- dimensional barcodes, with bars of different heights, were introduced by US firm Intermec Corporation in 1988. They can carry 100 times more information than the original system.20 FUTUROLOGISTS predict that barcodes will eventually be replaced by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which would be small and cheap enough to be hidden in packaging. Instead of scanning every item individually, an RFID till would simply total up every item in your shopping trolley as it approached.