How do Barcodes work ?

TOMY released the Barcode Battler computer game in 1992. Players insert a barcode into the machine which scans it and converts it into a character, who is then put into action in the fight game.22 THE CueCat scanner - a home barcode reader that plugs into a PC - was released in America in 2000. When users run it over a barcode printed on a newspaper advert, it automatically takes you to the relevant website.

YOU can barcode yourself by logging on to Just type in your age, gender, height, weight and country of origin, and your personal barcode will pop up onscreen, ready for printing.

SAFEWAY introduced the first self-scanning store in the UK in 1995. Shoppers scan items and pay using their credit or debit card.

BARCODES save shoppers, retailers and manufacturers pounds 17billion a year, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.26 A NEW way of combating fraud was revealed by Russell Cowburn of Durham University in October of last year. The system, whereby barcodes are peppered with magnetic particles, would allow a modified barcode reader to check if the barcode it scans is forged - and so uncover fake goods.

LONDON'S Charing Cross Hospital is testing a system where patients wear a barcoded wristband. When it's scanned, a drawer in the drugs trolley opens with the right medicine.28 MAD magazine carried a giant barcode on its front cover in October 1977 with the message: "Hope this issue jams every computer in the world".

LANGUAGE experts have pointed out the amazing similarity of a fifth-century Irish alphabet known as Ogham - which consists of a series of horizontal lines and gaps - to modern-day barcodes.30 THE barcodes printed on newspapers differ from others because they include a digit to represent the day of publication.

The very first scanning of a consumer barcode was in June of 1974 in Troy, Ohio from a pack of Wrigley Company chewing gum.

Originally, barcodes were linear or one-dimensional (1D) – using a system of varying widths and spacing of parallel lines to represent data.

The first 2D barcode was developed in 1987 by David Allais at Intermed Corporation and was called Code 49.  2D barcodes allow the use of rectangles, dots, hexagons, and other geometric patterns and can contain hundreds of times the amount of information as 1D barcodes.

Denso Wave’s QR Code can hold as much as 7,000 digits or 4,000 characters of text – compared to a 1D Code which can only hold about 20 characters.

2D barcodes can be used to import data from external sources like MS Office programs, MS SQL Servers, and other databases and files; this means they can often be efficiently integrated with a company’s existing tracking methods and then used to improve those methods.

Most smartphones, including the iPhone and Android, are able to easily read 2D barcodes using the phone’s application. The ubiquity of these phones has increasingly made 2D barcodes a way to share important information with consumers; allowing codes to be placed on advertisements and products which can be easily scanned by consumers.

2D barcodes are being used by hospitals to ensure patients get the right medications on the right schedule.

If you run a busy store, you need to keep track of all the things you sell so you can make sure the ones your customers want to buy are always in stock.

The simplest way of doing that is to walk around the shelves looking for empty spaces and simply refilling where you need to.

Alternatively, you could write down what people buy at the checkout, compile a list of all the purchases, and then simply use that to reorder your stock.

That's fine for a small store, but what if you're running a giant branch of Wal-Mart with thousands of items on sale? There are many other difficulties of running shops smoothly.

If you mark all your items with their prices, and you need to change the prices before you sell the goods, you have to reprice everything. And what about shoplifting?

If you see a lot of whisky bottles missing from the shelves, can you really be certain you've sold them all? How do you know if some have been stolen?

Using barcode technology in stores can help to solve all these problems. It lets you keep a centralized record on a computer system that tracks products, prices, and stock levels.

You can change prices as often as you like, without having to put new price tags on all your bottles and boxes. You can instantly see when stock levels of certain items are running low and reorder.

Because barcode technology is so accurate, you can be reasonably confident that any items that are missing (and don't appear to have been sold) have probably been stolen—and maybe move them to a more secure part of your store or protect them with RFID tags.

A barcode-based stock system like this has three main parts.

First, there's a central computer running a database (record system) that keeps a tally of all the products you're selling, who makes it, what each one costs, and how many you have in stock.

Second, there are the barcodes printed on all the products. Finally, there's one or more checkout scanners that can read the barcodes.