Little Big Tomatoes

I found a very good introduction into barcodes, if you are interested start reading from qrme.co.uk:

QR codes are beginning to gain ground in the UK so I’ve decided to write an article covering the brief history of barcodes and the lead up to the introduction of QR Codes to give you an understanding of the technology. I’ve been in IT for 20 years and, as with most technically orientated people, I tend to fall into the ‘techie’ trap when writing articles explaining technology. The article normally ends up reading like a technical manual for NASA’s space shuttle so I’ve made a conscious effort to stick to layman’s terms to make the article clear for a wide audience.

What is a barcode ?

Barcodes are simply a mechanism to capture information without the need to type in letters and numbers at the keyboard and virtually everything you buy these days in supermarkets have a barcode which simply contains a unique product code. The actual number printed beneath the barcode is the actual number that is encoded in the barcode. The human-readable number is not actually read by the barcode scanner, It’s just there for us to quote to customer services departments when you have a issue with a product.
If you quote this number the exact product can be identified when the call center adviser enters the number into their stock system.
Barcodes you see on everyday supermarket items are in a format (symbology) known as EAN (European Article Number) and are classed as 1D (One dimensional) barcodes as the vertical stripes represent a series of numbers.

Go to the original article to continue reading.

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