BARCODES

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional (1D). Later they evolved into rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns in 2 dimensions (2D). Although 2D systems use a variety of symbols, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well. Barcodes originally were scanned by special optical scanners called barcode readers; later, scanners and interpretive software became available on devices including desktop printers and Smartphone. A barcode reader (or barcode scanner) is an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the barcode's image data provided by the sensor and sending the barcode's content to the scanner's output port. In 1948 Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA overheard the president of the local food chain, Food Fair, asking one of the deans to research a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friend Norman Joseph Woodland about the request, and they started working on a variety of systems. Their first working system used ultraviolet ink, but this proved too easy to fade and was fairly expensive. His next inspiration came from Morse code. On 20 October 1949 Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for "Classifying Apparatus and Method". The patent was issued on 7 October 1952 as US Patent 2,612,994.

In 1966 the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) held a meeting where they discussed the idea of automated checkout systems. The detailed sales information acquired by the new systems allowed greater responsiveness to customer needs. This was reflected in the fact that about 5 weeks after installing barcode scanners, sales in grocery stores typically started climbing and eventually leveled off at a 1012% increase in sales that never dropped off. There also was a 12% decrease in operating cost for the stores that enabled them to lower prices to increase market share. It was shown in the field that the return on investment for a barcode scanner was 41.5%. By 1980, 8,000 stores per year were converting.

Benefits:
1. Fast-selling items can be identified quickly and automatically reordered. 2. Slow-selling items can be identified, preventing inventory build-up. 3. The effects of merchandising changes can be monitored, allowing fastmoving, more profitable items to occupy the best space, 4. Historical data can be used to predict seasonal fluctuations very accurately. 5. Items may be repriced on the shelf to reflect both sale prices and price increases.

Working:
The information or data is encoded using the width of printed bars, width of spaces between bars and relative positions of wide or narrow bars and spaces. Barcodes are simple machine readable codes that the computer can reproduce directly into the bit streams of zeros and ones which is the machine language of computers. The amount of information that can be stored in these labels is limited only by choice of symbology.05111128817 is a version of UPC code here 0 stands for the country,51111 for manufacturers code,28818 or product and last digit is check digit, used for checking the accuracy of reading system. The computer checks the code and matches it with information in its own database and does the identification. It simplifies billing and inventory of products. The billing person scans the label and the bill is printed instantaneously saving time for the customer and clerk. Thus barcodes have helped organizations increase efficiency, reduce operational cost, and in turn increase profits.