The Bar Code

What’s back white and read all over? It’s smaller than a matchbox.  and probably the most often seen, yet least noticed symbol in the United States .It helps millions of Americas every day, but no one notices it. It’s a few inches away from your eyes at this moment. Look at the back cover of your textbook and you’ll see a bar code.

            Bar codes are a series of black and white lines of different widths. These lines represent the price of the product. They are read all over by a scanner. The scanner is operated by a very strong and very narrow ray of electric light called a laser beam. This beam of light translates the black and white lines into a numbering system that the computer is able to understand. The computer transfers the lines into numbers, then prints the price of the product onto the screen.

            The numbers you see at the bottom of the bar code have nothing to do with the price. They indicate which company made the product and what the item is. In supermarkets, the first six say what the product is and add a little more information. For example, in one supermarket, 134279 tell the computer the product is a package of cereal weighing one pound.   

            We are manual scanners in small shops and bookstores or at libraries. Supermarkets have automatic scanners. They are underneath the glass window at the checkout counter. Theses canners are operated by lasers that look like compact discs. The disc turns around and takes in the information from the bar code in much the same way as the manual scanners do. The cashier holds the item over the glass window and the scanner reads all the information in a few seconds, Now, Shopping is a little quicker and a little easier for everyone.

            Below are same trivia points about bar codes.

            .Bar Codes don’t have to be black and white. A laser can read any color except red. (The beam of the laser is usually red in color.)

            .The Bar Codes includes a code that alerts security if anyone tries to alter it.

            .There are some items that still don’t have a bar code. No one has yet worked out a way to bar code fragile items like tomatoes without damaging them.