Thursday, June 25, 2009

Happy Birthday



The barcode turns 35:
Bar code met the laser scanner on Friday, June 26, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, according to Motorola. With the 35th anniversary, Motorola offered some bar code technology relections, since Symbol Technologies, now a part of Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions, was founded, in part, by Dr. Jerome Swartz, the inventor of the laser scanning device for use with bar codes.

Motorola says:

- Without the bar code / laser scanner partnership, we'd have long lines at registers and tolls, (even more) lost baggage at the airport, and a lot of waiting for a package that may never arrive.

- Before the practical integration of bar codes and laser scanners, each company had its way of designating products, using a variety of letters, numbers or no codes at all.

- Typical error rate for human data entry is 1 error per 300 characters; with barcode scanners, the error rate can be as good as 1 error in 36 trillion characters.

- Use of the bar code ultimately resulted in significant economic and productivity gains for shoppers, retailers and manufacturers, with estimated cost savings of $17 billion in the grocery sector alone (according to GS1 US).

- UPC bar codes are scanned more than 10 billion times a day in applications spanning more than 25 industries.

14 comments:

Sweet Cashback said...

Double First !

Sweet Cashback said...

I am still waiting for the RFID revolution they announced years and years ago. A tag on every package.Pfffffft

Rob Dawg said...

And when it gets caught between your teeth like in that last picture?

Pleather Murse said...

NWO Mark of the Beast.

Unknown said...

Casey should be wearing a bar-coded shirt -- long black-and-stripes. :-p

Unknown said...

err... "long black-and-white stripes". blah.

Jean ValJean said...

Speaking of "Black and White" and end of an era (from last post):
Michael Jackson dies today from Cardiac Arrest

Rob Dawg said...

Kiddie diddler and exurban rapist. He did to little boys what he did to coastal ranch land. He's gone, the scars remain.

wagga said...

On one hand, the world has lost a natural beauty, on the other hand the world is a little cleaner, a lot less ambiguous & the real winners are the Iranian/Burmese tyrants, because our attention is focused on stupid pop culture...

Orange10 said...

We lost two Baby Boomer celebrities today.

Beginning of the end of this loathsome generation of people.

Pleather Murse said...

I'm reading Michael Jackson's latest book, "The Ins and Outs of Child-Rearing."

Why was Jacko spotted at the Wal-Mart last week? He heard that boys' pants were half off.

wagga said...

Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales" -- the illustrations the site uses as error messages -- user FoieGrasie posting, "Irony: The protesters in Iran using twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of 'Michael Jackson RIP.' Well done." The site's status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.

Mr. Outspoken said...

The truth comes out. Iran killed Michael Jackson to disable the protestors. Kind of a lo-tech DOS attack. The question remains... What do we need to do to turn the attention to Serin?

Lost Cause said...

Cardiac arrest has nothing necessarily to do with heart disease. My money is on drug overdose.