Barcode

A barcode(also bar code) is an optical, machine-readable,

representation of data; the data usually describes something about
the object that carries the barcode. Traditional barcodes
systematically represent data by varying the widths and spacing’s of
parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or one-dimensional
(1D). Later, two-dimensional (2D) variants were developed, using
rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns, called
matrix codes or 2D barcodes, although they do not use bars as such.
Initially, barcodes were only scanned by special optical scanners
called barcode readers. Later application software became available for devices that could
read images, such as smartphones with cameras.

An early use of one type of barcode in an industrial context was sponsored by the
Association of American Railroads in the late 1960s. Developed by General Telephone
and Electronics (GTE) and called KarTrak ACI (Automatic Car Identification), this
scheme involved placing colored stripes in various combinations on steel plates which
were affixed to the sides of railroad rolling stock. Two plates were used per car, one on
each side, with the arrangement of the colored stripes encoding information such as
ownership, type of equipment, and identification number. The plates were read by a
trackside scanner, located for instance, at the entrance to a classification yard, while the
car was moving past. The project was abandoned after about ten years because the system
proved unreliable after long-term use.

Barcodes became commercially successful when they were used to automate supermarket
checkout systems, a task for which they have become almost universal. Their use has
spread to many other tasks that are generically referred to as automatic identification and
data capture (AIDC). The very first scanning of the now ubiquitous Universal Product
Code (UPC) barcode was on a pack of Wrigley Company chewing gum in June 1974. QR
codes, a specific type of 2D barcode, have recently become very popular.

Other systems have made inroads in the AIDC market, but the simplicity, universality and
low cost of barcodes has limited the role of these other systems, particularly before
technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) became available after 2000.

Contents

 1 History
 o 1.1 Collins at Sylvania

o 1.2 Computer Identics Corporation

o 1.3 Universal Product Code

 2 Industrial adoption

 3 Use

 4 Symbologies

 5 Scanners (barcode readers)

 6 Quality control and verification

o 6.1 Barcode verifier standards

 7 Benefits

 8 Types of barcodes

o 8.1 Linear barcodes

o 8.2 Matrix (2D) barcodes

o 8.3 Example images

 9 In popular culture

 10 See also

 11 References

 12 Further reading

 13 External links

History

This article duplicates the scope of other articles, specifically, Universal Product Code
History. Please discuss this issue on the talk page and edit it to conform with
Wikipedia's Manual of Style
In 1948 Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US 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 the ink faded too easily and was expensive.

Convinced that the system was workable with further development, Woodland left
Drexel, moved into his father's apartment in Florida, and continued working on the
system. His next inspiration came from Morse code, and he formed his first barcode from
sand on the beach. "I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow
lines and wide lines out of them”. To read them, he adapted technology from optical
soundtracks in movies, using a 500-watt incandescent light bulb shining through the
paper onto an RCA935 photomultiplier tube (from a movie projector) on the far side. He
later decided that the system would work better if it were printed as a circle instead of a
line, allowing it to be scanned in any direction.

On 20 October 1949, Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for "Classifying
Apparatus and Method", in which they described both the linear and bull's eye printing
patterns, as well as the mechanical and electronic systems needed to read the code. The
patent was issued on 7 October 1952 as US Patent 2,612,994. In 1951, Woodland moved
to IBM and continually tried to interest IBM in developing the system. The company
eventually commissioned a report on the idea, which concluded that it was both feasible
and interesting, but that processing the resulting information would require equipment
that was some time off in the future.

IBM offered to buy the patent, but the offer was not accepted. Philco purchased the patent
in 1962 and then sold it to RCA sometime later.

Collins at Sylvania

During his time as an undergraduate, David Collins worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad
and became aware of the need to automatically identify railroad cars. Immediately after
receiving his master's degree from MIT in 1959, he started work at GTE Sylvania and
began addressing the problem. He developed a system called KarTrak using blue and red
reflective stripes attached to the side of the cars, encoding a six-digit company identifier
and a four-digit car number. Light reflected off the stripes was fed into one of two
photomultipliers, filtered for blue or red.[citation needed]

The Boston and Maine Railroad tested the KarTrak system on their gravel cars in 1961.
The tests continued until 1967, when the Association of American Railroads (AAR)
selected it as a standard, Automatic Car Identification, across the entire North American
fleet. The installations began on 10 October 1967. However, the economic downturn and
rash of bankruptcies in the industry in the early 1970s greatly slowed the rollout, and it
was not until 1974 that 95% of the fleet was labeled. To add to its woes, the system was
found to be easily fooled by dirt in certain applications, which greatly affected accuracy.
The AAR abandoned the system in the late 1970s, and it was not until the mid-1980s that
they introduced a similar system, this time based on radio tags.

The railway project had failed, but a toll bridge in New Jersey requested a similar system
so that it could quickly scan for cars that had purchased a monthly pass. Then the U.S.
Post Office requested a system to track trucks entering and leaving their facilities. These
applications required special retroreflector labels. Finally, Kal Kan asked the Sylvania
team for a simpler (and cheaper) version which they could put on cases of pet food for
inventory control.

Computer Identic Corporation

In 1967, with the railway system maturing, Collins went to management looking for
funding for a project to develop a black-and-white version of the code for other
industries. They declined, saying that the railway project was large enough, and they saw
no need to branch out so quickly.

Collins then quit Sylvania and formed the Computer Identic Corporation. As its first
innovations, Computer Ident’s moved from using incandescent light bulbs in its systems,
replacing them with helium–neon lasers, and incorporated a mirror as well, making it
capable of locating a barcode up to several feet in front of the scanner. This made the
entire process much simpler and more reliable, and typically enabled these devices to
deal with damaged labels, as well, by recognizing and reading the intact portions.

Computer Identic Corporation installed one of its first two scanning systems in the spring
of 1969 at a General Motors (Buick) factory in Flint, Michigan. The system was used to
identify a dozen types of transmissions moving on an overhead conveyor from production
to shipping. The other scanning system was installed at General Trading Company's
distribution center in Carlstadt, New Jersey to direct shipments to the proper loading bay.

Universal Product Code

Main article: Universal Product Code

In 1966 the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) held a meeting on the idea of
automated checkout systems. RCA, who had purchased the rights to the original
Woodland patent, attended the meeting and initiated an internal project to develop a
system based on the bullseye code. The Kroger grocery chain volunteered to test it.
In the mid-1970s, the NAFC established the Ad-Hoc Committee for U.S. Supermarkets
on a Uniform Grocery-Product Code to set guidelines for barcode development. In
addition, it created a symbol-selection subcommittee to help standardize the approach. In
cooperation with consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., they developed a standardized 11-
digit code for identifying products. The committee then sent out a contract tender to
develop a barcode system to print and read the code. The request went to Singer, National
Cash Register (NCR), Litton Industries, RCA, Pitney-Bowes, IBM and many others. A
wide variety of barcode approaches was studied, including linear codes, RCA's bullseye
concentric circle code, starburst patterns and others.

In the spring of 1971, RCA demonstrated their bullseye code at another industry meeting.
IBM executives at the meeting noticed the crowds at the RCA booth and immediately
developed their own system. IBM marketing specialist, Alec Jablonover, remembered
that the company still employed Woodland, and he established a new facility in North
Carolina to lead development.

In July 1972, RCA began an eighteen-month test in a Kroger store in Cincinnati.

Barcodes were printed on small pieces of adhesive paper, and attached by hand by store
employees when they were adding price tags. The code proved to have a serious problem;
the printers would sometimes smear ink, rendering the code unreadable in most
orientations. However, a linear code, like the one being developed by Woodland at IBM,
was printed in the direction of the stripes, so extra ink would simply make the code
"taller" while remaining readable. So on 3 April 1973, the IBM UPC was selected as the
NAFC standard. IBM had designed five versions of UPC symbology for future industry
requirements: UPC A, B, C, D, and E.

NCR installed a testbed system at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, near the factory
that was producing the equipment. On 26 June 1974, Clyde Dawson pulled a 10-pack of
Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum out of his basket and it was scanned by Sharon Buchanan at
8:01 am. The pack of gum and the receipt are now on display in the Smithsonian
Institution. It was the first commercial appearance of the UPC.

In 1971, an IBM team was assembled for an intensive planning session, thrashing out, 12
to 18 hours a day, how the technology would be deployed and operate cohesively across
the system, and scheduling a roll-out plan. By 1973, the team were meeting with grocery
manufacturers to introduce the symbol that would need to be printed on the packaging or
labels of all of their products. There were no cost savings for a grocery to use it, unless at
least 70% of the grocery's products had the barcode printed on the product by the
manufacturer. IBM projected that 75% would be needed in 1975. Yet, although this was
achieved, there were still scanning machines in fewer than 200 grocery stores by 1977.

Economic studies conducted for the grocery industry committee projected over $40
million in savings to the industry from scanning by the mid-1970s. Those numbers were
not achieved in that time-frame and some predicted the demise of barcode scanning. The
usefulness of the barcode required the adoption of expensive scanners by a critical mass
of retailers while manufacturers simultaneously adopted barcode labels. Neither wanted
to move first and results were not promising for the first couple of years, with Business
Week proclaiming "The Supermarket Scanner That Failed" in a 1976 article.

On the other hand, experience with barcode scanning in those stores revealed additional
benefits. The detailed sales information acquired by the new systems allowed greater
responsiveness to customer habits, needs and preferences. 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 10–12% increase in sales that never
dropped off. There was also a 1–2% decrease in operating cost for those stores, and this
enabled them to lower prices and thereby 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.

Sims Supermarkets were the first location in Australia to use barcodes, starting in 1979.

The global public launch of the barcode was greeted with minor skepticism from
conspiracy theorists, who considered barcodes to be an intrusive surveillance technology,
and from some Christians, pioneered by a 1982 book The New Money System 666 by
Mary Stewart Relfe, who thought the codes hid the number 666, representing the number
of the beast.[15] Television host Phil Donahue described barcodes as a "corporate plot
against consumers".[16]

Industrial adoption

In 1981, the United States Department of Defense adopted the use of Code 39 for
marking all products sold to the United States military. This system, Logistics
Applications of Automated Marking and Reading Symbols (LOGMARS), is still used by
DoD and is widely viewed as the catalyst for widespread adoption of barcoding in
industrial uses.[17]

Use

Barcodes such as the UPC have become a ubiquitous element of modern civilization, as
evidenced by their enthusiastic adoption by stores around the world; most items other
than fresh produce from a grocery store now have UPC barcodes.[citation needed] This
helps track items and also reduces instances of shoplifting involving price tag swapping,
although shoplifters can now print their own barcodes. In addition, retail chain
membership cards (issued mostly by grocery stores and specialty "big box" retail stores
such as sporting equipment, office supply, or pet stores) use barcodes to uniquely identify
consumers, allowing for customized marketing and greater understanding of individual
consumer shopping patterns. At the point of sale, shoppers can get product discounts or
special marketing offers through the address or e-mail address provided at registration.

Example of barcode on a patient identification wristband

They are widely used in the healthcare and hospital settings, ranging from patient
identification (to access patient data, including medical history, drug allergies, etc.) to
creating SOAP Notes with barcodes to medication management. They are also used to
facilitate the separation and indexing of documents that have been imaged in batch
scanning applications, track the organization of species in biology, and integrate with in-
motion checkweighers to identify the item being weighed in a conveyor line for data
collection.

They can also be used to keep track of objects and people; they are used to keep track of
rental cars, airline luggage, nuclear waste, registered mail, express mail and parcels.
Barcoded tickets allow the holder to enter sports arenas, cinemas, theatres, fairgrounds,
and transportation, and are used to record the arrival and departure of vehicles from rental
facilities etc. This can allow proprietors to identify duplicate or fraudulent tickets more
easily. Barcodes are widely used in shop floor control applications software where
employees can scan work orders and track the time spent on a job.

Barcoded parcel

Barcodes are also used in some kinds of non-contact 1D and 2D position sensors. A series
of barcodes are used in some kinds of absolute 1D linear encoder. The barcodes are
packed close enough together that the reader always has one or two barcodes in its field
of view. As a kind of fiducial marker, the relative position of the barcode in the field of
view of the reader gives incremental precise positioning, in some cases with sub-pixel
resolution. The data decoded from the barcode gives the absolute coarse position. An
"address carpet", such as Howell's binary pattern and the Anoto dot pattern, is a 2D
barcode designed so that a reader, even though only a tiny portion of the complete carpet
is in the field of view of the reader, can find its absolute X,Y position and rotation in the
carpet.

Some 2D barcodes embed a hyperlink to a web page. A capable cellphone might be used
to read the pattern and browse the linked website, which can help a shopper find the best
price for an item in the vicinity. Since 2005, airlines use an IATA-standard 2D barcode on
boarding passes (Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP)), and since 2008 2D barcodes sent to
mobile phones enable electronic boarding passes.

Some applications for barcodes have fallen out of use. In the 1970s and 1980s, software
source code was occasionally encoded in a barcode and printed on paper (Cauzin
Softstrip and Paper byte are barcode symbologies specifically designed for this
application), and the 1991 Barcode Battler computer game system used any standard
barcode to generate combat statistics.

In the 21st century, many artists have started using barcodes in art, such as Scott Blake's
Barcode Jesus, as part of the post-modernism movement.

Symbologies

The mapping between messages and barcodes is called a symbology. The specification of
a symbology includes the encoding of the message into bars and spaces, any required
start and stop markers, the size of the quiet zone required to be before and after the
barcode, and the computation of a checksum.

Linear symbologies can be classified mainly by two properties:

Continuous vs. discrete

 Characters in discrete symbologies are composed of n bars and n − 1 spaces. There

is an additional space between characters, but it does not convey information, and
may have any width as long as it is not confused with the end of the code.

 Characters in continuous symbologies are composed of n bars and n spaces, and

usually abut, with one character ending with a space and the next beginning with a
bar, or vice versa. A special end pattern that has bars on both ends is required to
end the code.

Two-width vs. many-width

 A two-width, also called a binary bar code, contains bars and spaces of two
widths, "wide" and "narrow". The precise width of the wide bars and spaces is not
 critical; typically it is permitted to be anywhere between 2 and 3 times the width
of the narrow equivalents.

 Some other symbologies use bars of two different heights (POSTNET), or the
presence or absence of bars (CPC Binary Barcode). These are normally also
considered binary bar codes.

 Bars and spaces in many-width symbologies are all multiples of a basic width
called the module; most such codes use four widths of 1, 2, 3 and 4 modules.

Some symbologies use interleaving. The first character is encoded using black bars of
varying width. The second character is then encoded by varying the width of the white
spaces between these bars. Thus characters are encoded in pairs over the same section of
the barcode. Interleaved 2 of 5 is an example of this.

Stacked symbologies repeat a given linear symbology vertically.

The most common among the many 2D symbologies are matrix codes, which feature
square or dot-shaped modules arranged on a grid pattern. 2D symbologies also come in
circular and other patterns and may employ steganography, hiding modules within an
image (for example, DataGlyphs).

Linear symbologies are optimized for laser scanners, which sweep a light beam across the
barcode in a straight line, reading a slice of the barcode light-dark patterns. Scanning at
an angle makes the modules appear wider, but does not change the width ratios. Stacked
symbologies are also optimized for laser scanning, with the laser making multiple passes
across the barcode.

In the 1990s development of charge coupled device (CCD) imagers to read barcodes was
pioneered by Welch Allyn. Imaging does not require moving parts, as a laser scanner
does. In 2007, linear imaging had begun to supplant laser scanning as the preferred scan
engine for its performance and durability.

2D symbologies cannot be read by a laser, as there is typically no sweep pattern that can
encompass the entire symbol. They must be scanned by an image-based scanner
employing a CCD or other digital camera sensor technology.

Scanners (barcode readers)

Main article: Barcode reader

The earliest, and still the cheapest, barcode scanners are built from a fixed light and a
single photosensor that is manually "scrubbed" across the barcode.
Barcode scanners can be classified into three categories based on their connection to the
computer. The older type is the RS-232 barcode scanner. This type requires special
programming for transferring the input data to the application program.

"Keyboard interface scanners" connect to a computer using a PS/2 or AT keyboard–

compatible adaptor cable (a "keyboard wedge"). The barcode's data is sent to the
computer as if it had been typed on the keyboard.

Like the keyboard interface scanner, USB scanners are easy to install and do not need
custom code for transferring input data to the application program. On PCs running
Windows the HID interface emulates the data merging action of a hardware "keyboard
wedge", and the scanner automatically behaves like an additional keyboard.

Many phones are able to decode barcodes using their built-in camera, as well. Google's
mobile Android operating system uses both their own Google Goggles application or
third party barcode scanners like Scan. Nokia's Symbian operating system features a
barcode scanner, while mbarcode is a QR code reader for the Maemo operating system.
In Apple iOS 11, the native camera app can decode QR codes and can link to URLs, join
wireless networks, or perform other operations depending on the QR Code contents.
Other paid and free apps are available with scanning capabilities for other symbologies or
for earlier iOS versions. With BlackBerry devices, the App World application can
natively scan barcodes and load any recognized Web URLs on the device's Web browser.
Windows Phone 7.5 is able to scan barcodes through the Bing search app. However, these
devices are not designed specifically for the capturing of barcodes. As a result, they do
not decode nearly as quickly or accurately as a dedicated barcode scanner or portable data
terminal.

Quality control and verification

Barcode verification examines scan ability and the quality of the barcode in comparison
to industry standards and specifications. Barcode verifiers are primarily used by
businesses that print and use barcodes. Any trading partner in the supply chain can test
barcode quality. It is important to verify a barcode to ensure that any reader in the supply
chain can successfully interpret a barcode with a low error rate. Retailers levy large
penalties for non-compliant barcodes. These chargebacks can reduce a manufacturer's
revenue by 2% to 10%.

A barcode verifier works the way a reader does, but instead of simply decoding a
barcode, a verifier performs a series of tests. For linear barcodes these tests are:

 Edge determination

 Minimum reflectance
  Symbol contrast

 Minimum edge contrast

 Modulation

 Defects

 Decode

 Decodability

2D matrix symbols look at the parameters:

 Symbol contrast

 Modulation

 Decode

 Unused error correction

 Fixed (finder) pattern damage

 Grid non-uniformity

 Axial non-uniformity

Depending on the parameter, each ANSI test is graded from 0.0 to 4.0 (F to A), or given a
pass or fail mark. Each grade is determined by analyzing the scan reflectance profile
(SRP), an analog graph of a single scan line across the entire symbol. The lowest of the 8
grades is the scan grade, and the overall ISO symbol grade is the average of the
individual scan grades. For most applications a 2.5 (C) is the minimal acceptable symbol
grade.

Compared with a reader, a verifier measures a barcode's optical characteristics to

international and industry standards. The measurement must be repeatable and consistent.
Doing so requires constant conditions such as distance, illumination angle, sensor angle
and verifier aperture. Based on the verification results, the production process can be
adjusted to print higher quality barcodes that will scan down the supply chain.

Barcode verifier standards

  Barcode verifiers should comply with the ISO/IEC 15426-1 (linear) or ISO/IEC
15426-2 (2D).

This standard defines the measuring accuracy of a barcode verifier.

 The current international barcode quality specification is ISO/IEC 15416 (linear)

and ISO/IEC 15415 (2D). The European Standard EN 1635 has been withdrawn
and replaced by ISO/IEC 15416. The original U.S. barcode quality specification
was ANSI X3.182. (UPCs used in the US – ANSI/UCC5).

This standard defines the quality requirements for barcodes and matrix codes (also called
optical codes).

 As of 2011 the ISO workgroup JTC1 SC31 was developing a Direct Part Marking
(DPM) quality standard: ISO/IEC TR 29158.

International standards are available from the International Organization for

Standardization (ISO).

These standards are also available from local/national standardization organizations, such
as ANSI, BSI, DIN, NEN and others.

Benefits

In point-of-sale management, barcode systems can provide detailed up-to-date

information on the business, accelerating decisions and with more confidence. For
example:

 Fast-selling items can be identified quickly and automatically reordered.

 Slow-selling items can be identified, preventing inventory build-up.

 The effects of merchandising changes can be monitored, allowing fast-moving,

more profitable items to occupy the best space.

 Historical data can be used to predict seasonal fluctuations very accurately.

 Items may be repriced on the shelf to reflect both sale prices and price increases.

 This technology also enables the profiling of individual consumers, typically

through a voluntary registration of discount cards. While pitched as a benefit to the
consumer, this practice is considered to be potentially dangerous by privacy
advocates.
Besides sales and inventory tracking, barcodes are very useful in logistics and supply
chain management.

 When a manufacturer packs a box for shipment, a Unique Identifying Number

(UID) can be assigned to the box.

 A database can link the UID to relevant information about the box; such as order
number, items packed, quantity packed, destination, etc.

 The information can be transmitted through a communication system such as

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) so the retailer has the information about a
shipment before it arrives.

 Shipments that are sent to a Distribution Center (DC) are tracked before
forwarding. When the shipment reaches its final destination, the UID gets scanned,
so the store knows the shipment's source, contents, and cost.

Barcode scanners are relatively low cost and extremely accurate compared to key-entry,
with only about 1 substitution error in 15,000 to 36 trillion characters entered.[36]
[unreliable source?] The exact error rate depends on the type of barcode.

Types of barcodes

Linear barcodes
A first generation, "one dimensional" barcode that is made up of lines and spaces of
various widths that create specific patterns.

Continuous Bar
Example Symbology Uses
or discrete widths
An Australia Post barcode as
used on a business reply paid
Australia 4 bar envelope and applied by
Discrete
Post barcode heights automated sorting machines to
other mail when initially
processed in fluorescent ink .
Old format used in libraries and
Codabar Discrete Two blood banks and on airbills (out
of date)
Code 25 – Continuous Two Industrial
Non-
interleaved 2
of 5
Code 25 – Wholesale, libraries
Interleaved 2 Continuous Two International standard ISO/IEC
of 5 16390

Code 11 Discrete Two Telephones (out of date)

Italian pharmacode – use Code

Farmacode or
Discrete Two 39 (no international standard
Code 32
available)

Various – international standard

Code 39 Discrete Two
ISO/IEC 16388

Code 49 Continuous Many Various

Code 93 Continuous Many Various

Various – International Standard

Code 128 Continuous Many
ISO/IEC 15417
CPC Binary Discrete Two

DX film edge
Neither Tall/short Color print film
barcode

Addon code (magazines), GS1-

approved – not an own
EAN 2 Continuous Many symbology – to be used only
with an EAN/UPC according to
ISO/IEC 15420
Addon code (books), GS1-
approved – not an own
EAN 5 Continuous Many symbology – to be used only
with an EAN/UPC according to
ISO/IEC 15420
 Worldwide retail, GS1-approved
EAN-8,
Continuous Many – International Standard
EAN-13
ISO/IEC 15420

Facing
Identification Discrete Two USPS business reply mail
Mark
GS1-128
(formerly
named Various, GS1-approved – just an
UCC/EAN- application of the Code 128
128), Continuous Many (ISO/IEC 15417) using the ANS
incorrectly MH10.8.2 AI Datastructures. It
referenced as is not a separate symbology.
EAN 128 and
UCC 128
GS1
DataBar,
formerly
Reduced Continuous Many Various, GS1-approved
Space
Symbology
(RSS)
United States Postal Service,
Intelligent 4 bar replaces both POSTNET and
Discrete
Mail barcode heights PLANET symbols (formerly
named OneCode)
Non-retail packaging levels,
GS1-approved – is just an
Interleaved 2/5 Code (ISO/IEC
ITF-14 Continuous Two
16390) with a few additional
specifications, according to the
GS1 General Specifications

Used in Japan, similar and

JAN Continuous Many compatible with EAN-13
(ISO/IEC 15420)

Japan Post 4 bar

Discrete Japan Post
barcode heights
 Coloured Used in North America on
KarTrak ACI Discrete
bars railroad rolling equipment

Used for warehouse shelves and

MSI Continuous Two
inventory

Pharmaceutical packaging (no

Pharmacode Discrete Two
international standard available)

United States Postal Service (no

PLANET Continuous Tall/short
international standard available)
Catalogs, store shelves,
Plessey Continuous Two inventory (no international
standard available)
4 bar
PostBar Discrete Canadian Post office
heights
United States Postal Service (no
POSTNET Discrete Tall/short
international standard available)

RM4SCC / 4 bar
Discrete Royal Mail / PostNL
KIX heights

RM Discrete 4 bar Royal Mail

 Mailmark C heights
RM 4 bar
Discrete Royal Mail
Mailmark L heights
Telepen Continuous Two Libraries (UK)
Universal
Worldwide retail, GS1-approved
Product Code
Continuous Many – International Standard
(UPC-A and
ISO/IEC 15420
UPC-E)

Matrix (2D) barcodes

A matrix code, also termed a 2D barcode or simply a 2D code, is a two-dimensional way
to represent information. It is similar to a linear (1-dimensional) barcode, but can
represent more data per unit area.

Example Name Notes

Designed by Andrew Longacre at Welch Allyn (now

Aztec Code Honeywell Scanning and Mobility). Public domain. –
International Standard: ISO/IEC 24778

Public domain. Code 1 is currently used in the health

Code 1 care industry for medicine labels and the recycling
industry to encode container content for sorting.[37]
ColorZip[38] developed colour barcodes that can be
ColorCode read by camera phones from TV screens; mainly used
in Korea.[39]
Color Construct Code is one of the few barcode
Color
symbologies designed to take advantage of multiple
Construct Code
colors.[40][41]

CrontoSign (also called photoTAN) is a visual

CrontoSign cryptogram[42] containing encrypted order data and
a one-time-use TAN.[43]

CyberCode From Sony.

d-touch readable when printed on deformable gloves and
 stretched and distorted[44][45]
From Palo Alto Research Center (also termed Xerox
PARC).[46]

Patented.[47] DataGlyphs can be embedded into a

DataGlyphs
half-tone image or background shading pattern in a
way that is almost perceptually invisible, similar to
steganography.[48][49]

From Microscan Systems, formerly RVSI Acuity

CiMatrix/Siemens. Public domain. Increasingly used
Data Matrix throughout the United States. Single segment Data
Matrix is also termed Semacode. – International
Standard: ISO/IEC 16022.

Datastrip Code From Datastrip, Inc.

The Digimarc Barcode is a unique identifier, or code,
Digimarc based on imperceptible patterns that can be applied to
Barcode marketing materials, including packaging, displays,
ads in magazines, circulars, radio and television[50]

Standardized as AIM Dotcode Rev 3.0. Public

DotCode Domain. Used to track individual cigarette and
pharmaceutical packages.

Also known as Philips Dot Code.[51] Patented in

Dot Code A
1988.[52]
patterned paper used in conjunction with a digital pen
to create handwritten digital documents. The printed
digital paper
dot pattern uniquely identifies the position
coordinates on the paper.
Introduced by GS1 US and GS1 Germany, the
DWCode is a unique, imperceptible data carrier that
DWCode
is repeated across the entire graphics design of a
package[53]

Designed for decoding by cameraphones;[54] from

EZcode
ScanLife.[55]
High Capacity
Developed by Microsoft; licensed by ISAN-IA.
Color Barcode

Barcode designed to encode Chinese characters

Han Xin
introduced by Association for Automatic
Barcode
Identification and Mobility in 2011.

From Robot Design Associates. Uses greyscale or

HueCode
colour.[56]
From Iconlab, Inc. The standard 2D barcode in South
Korea. All 3 South Korean mobile carriers put the
InterCode scanner program of this code into their handsets to
access mobile internet, as a default embedded
program.
Used by United Parcel Service. Now Public Domain

MaxiCode

Designed to disseminate high capacity mobile phone

MMCC content via existing colour print and electronic
media, without the need for network connectivity

NexCode NexCode is developed and patented by S5 Systems.

Nintendo e- Developed by Olympus Corporation to store songs,

Reader#Dot images, and mini-games for Game Boy Advance on
code Pokémon trading cards.
 Originated by Symbol Technologies. Public Domain.
PDF417
– International Standard: ISO/IEC 15438

American proprietary and patented 2D barcode from

Qode
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc.[55]

Initially developed, patented and owned by Toyota

subsidiary Denso Wave for car parts management;
they have chosen not to exercise their patent rights.
Can encode Latin and Japanese Kanji and Kana
characters, music, images, URLs, emails. De facto
QR code
standard for Japanese cell phones. Used with
BlackBerry Messenger to pick up contacts rather than
using a PIN code. The most frequently used type of
code to scan with smartphones. Public Domain. –
International Standard: ISO/IEC 18004

A type of marker used for placing content inside

augmented reality applications. Some AR Codes can
AR Code
contain QR codes inside, so that content AR content
can be linked to.[57] See also ARTag.

Circular barcodes for camera phones. Originally from

ShotCode High Energy Magic Ltd in name Spotcode. Before
that most likely termed TRIPCode.

Snapcode, also
called Boo-R used by Snapchat, Spectacles, etc.[58][59][60][61]
code
 SPARQCode QR code encoding standard from MSKYNET, Inc.

Developed and patented by VOICEYE, Inc. in South

Korea, it aims to allow blind and visually impaired
VOICEYE people to access printed information. It also claims to
be the 2D barcode that has the world's largest storage
capacity.

Example images

 First, Second and Third Generation Barcodes

GTIN-12 number encoded in UPC-A barcode symbol. First and last digit are
always placed outside the symbol to indicate Quiet Zones that are necessary for
barcode scanners to work properly

EAN-13 (GTIN-13) number encoded in EAN-13 barcode symbol. First digit is

always placed outside the symbol, additionally right quiet zone indicator (>) is
used to indicate Quiet Zones that are necessary for barcode scanners to work
properly

"Wikipedia" encoded in Code 93



"*WIKI39*" encoded in Code 39

'Wikipedia" encoded in Code 128

An example of a stacked barcode. Specifically a "Codablock" barcode.

PDF417 sample

Lorem ipsum boilerplate text as four segment Data Matrix 2D

"This is an example Aztec symbol for Wikipedia" encoded in Aztec Code



Text 'EZcode'

High Capacity Color Barcode of the URL for Wikipedia's article on High Capacity
Color Barcode

"Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" in several languages encoded in DataGlyphs

Two different 2D barcodes used in film: Dolby Digital between the sprocket holes
with the "Double-D" logo in the middle, and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound in the
blue area to the left of the sprocket holes


 The QR Code for the Wikipedia URL. "Quick Response", the most popular 2D
barcode in Japan, is promoted by Google. It is open in that the specification is
disclosed and the patent is not exercised.[62]

MaxiCode example. This encodes the string "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia"

ShotCode sample

detail of Twibright Optar scan from laser printed paper, carrying 32 kbit/s Ogg
Vorbis digital music (48 seconds per A4 page)

A KarTrak railroad Automatic Equipment Identification label on a caboose in

Florida