Barcode Reader

Barcode readers are devices used to discern the type of a product through image data.

Environment
A barcode reader’s environment is commonly a shop in a shopping centre, e.g. Woolworths. In Woolworths, every type of item has a unique barcode. So, No Frills milk bottles would have a certain barcode, Pura Milk milk, Dairy Farmers milk bottles would have a different barcode, and so on and so forth.

Purpose
A barcode reader’s purpose is to identify one barcode from another, and so, identify the product. So let’s put an end user into the picture, let’s call him Harry. In fact, let’s put two. The second one is Brent. Harry has just bought a No Frills 2L milk bottle. Brent, on the other hand, has bought a Pura Milk 2L milk bottle. They go to the counter, and the counter girl first checks in the No Frills bottle using a barcode reader (since she works directly with the system, she is the participant, or direct user).

When the counter girl scans in the barcode, reflected light from the barcode refracts through the lens and is captured by a light sensor within the barcode reader. The reflected light from the barcode is now changed into electrical impulses, the decoded by circuitry within the barcode reader, then sent through the reader’s output port into the Woolworths computer attached to the reader. A program on the computer analyses the binary code, then displays the appropriate product name and price on the screen, being, in this case, ‘No Frills 2L Milk Bottle’, and the price ‘$2.50’, in accordance with the numerical data from the barcode. In this case, the circuitry, sensor, lens and attached computer is the information technology, the numerical data from the barcode is the raw data to be processed, and the text that pops up on the screen of the counter girl is the processed information.

Now when Brent goes to the counter with his Pura Milk and has it scanned in, since the Pura Milk is a different brand to the No Frills, it has a different barcode, and therefore, a different set of numerical data. So when the reader scans the milk in, a different set of info pops up on the screen, say, ‘Pura 2L Milk Bottle’, and ‘$2.75’.

History
The idea of barcodes and barcode scanners first was born in 1932, thanks to Wallace Flint, who suggested automation of checkouts in stores or supermarkets. In 1948, a food chain got the same idea, and asked the Drexel Institute of Technology about it. Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland got to work on the idea, at first trying ink sensitive to UV rays. This was too expensive, however, so they invented what they called ‘article classification...through the medium of identifying patterns’. They got a patent for this, and in the 1960s, efforts to improve the system started to pile up.

In 1966, the first barcode was used in a commercial way. But it wasn’t until 1974 before the first industry-standard barcode was used, the UPC, or Uniform Product Code, invented by George Laurer. Wrigley’s Gum was the first barcoded item!