9th August 2026
Mundane life shifts fast or slow depending on your vantage point and day of the week. It takes a pause to consider how. And in a breath, I’m struck how effortless many undertakings feel today which were once complex. From making a phone call, travelling to far off lands to conjuring exotic dishes from unusual ingredients. A myriad of enabling aspects have evolved to foster and give impetus including a tiny sticker we all mostly ignore.
The barcode is ubiquitous. So much so that did you know every day, 10 billion items are scanned as they navigate vast and complex global trade routes? Oiling the wheels of our lives into continuous motion. As a universal service, surprisingly the barcode generates little political controversy yet has transformed the way products are built and how we shop the world over. The fat and thin lines magically imparting information for processing in a calm, systematic manner. Easing frictions once opaque and burdensome from the point of creation all the way to consumption.
A barcode is a standardised approach to identifying an item wherever in the world it resides. A typical barcode consists of a series of varying width vertical lines coupled with figures. The vertical lines explaining the integers in a machine readable form. When trending into use, multiple combinations of bars and numerals were utilised but today two key standards define how a barcode is created and read including structure, dimensions (height, width), spacing (including the white space around a bar code), data encoding, error correction mechanisms, print quality. Underneath these standards, symbologies clarify spacing or character sets. For example in Europe we employ EAN-13 which is a 13 digit barcode symbology. In the USA a 12 digit symbology is utilised. The system is overseen by a non for profit organisation GS1 based in Brussels.
The information in a barcode includes the manufacturer’s identification number, a specific item number and a final number as a check digit to ensure correct scanning. An article would be assigned a item number depending on its size or colour so each variant has a unique ‘code’. Astoundingly there can be over a trillion combinations of a standard 12 digit barcode, 10 trillion of the 13 digit and un-limitless variations of the QR kind (which we’ll touch on shortly).
Barcodes can be printed onto a variety of materials and scanners are able to read a code even if upside down. From the website Teklynx: ‘Barcode scanners use optical sensors to emit light onto the barcode and detect reflected light. The varying reflection, caused by differences in line thickness and spacing, allows the scanner to interpret the barcode pattern and decode the encoded data. Once the scanner captures the reflected light, it converts the information into an electrical signal. The signal is then decoded based on the barcode’s symbology and passed to connected systems for further processing. In other words, a barcode is simply a method of encoding information into a visual pattern a scanner can read; black lines absorb light while the white area reflects light, and the amount of light reflected is converted to data a computer can understand’.
Today small scanners are widespread and the use of barcodes has extended into industries such as healthcare, agriculture and transport. According to the BBC barcodes have also been utilised in quirky situations – to track the movement of honeybees and birds and lain on graves to direct a visitor to an online memorial for the decedent!
The barcode or its initial parent was Invented by the American, Norman Woodland in c1949. It is suggested he overheard a supermarket executive asking the Dean of the engineering school if the department could work on a solution to automatically capture product information at checkout in order to expedite the supply chain. The Dean turned the opportunity down but Woodland was intrigued and quit his job to spend time considering the problem of how to code an item with regularised details. Inspired by Morse code he drew lines as a way to represent information preferring initially a bulls-eye design rather than the vertical bars prevalent today. But although his concept was sound, the technology to move this into a reality was not and so the patent was sold on for a mere $15,000 in 1951.
In time IBM became interested in the notion particularly as advances in laser technology intimated that barcode scanning was becoming viable. Eventually the first product (a pack of chewing gum) was scanned in a supermarket in Ohio in June 1974 and the rest as they say is history.
Today we have refined the barcode through the use of 2D versions or the QR code. These rectangular or square tags cache information both vertically and horizontally and store a much greater volume of data without having to refer back to a database. Some suggest the demise of the 1D barcode is imminent….
I take great delight in learning about small but powerful leaps in human ingenuity which have slipped almost into obscurity yet underpin the simplicity of our lives. It’s a reminder, curiosity and determination are essential societal ingredients to cultivate. Even if only to make sure I can have my South African champagne exactly when I want it. I absolutely have my priorities right…
Curiosity and the rascal 