Prompt Cast
The Invention and Evolution of Barcodes: From Grocery Shopping to Tracking Bees
TLDR Barcodes were invented in 1949 to address the inefficiency of grocery shopping. They have since evolved to track various information such as manufacturer, stock quantity, and sale status, and can even be found on Tootsie Roll Pop sticks and bees.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Barcodes were invented to address the mess and inefficiency of grocery shopping before their invention.
05:25
Barcodes were invented to address the mess and inefficiency of grocery shopping before their invention.
10:21
In 1949, Woodland and Silver invented a machine to read barcodes, but it was useless without a reader, so they sold the patent and went to work for IBM, and in 1960 the first laser was debuted, which was key to reading barcodes.
15:21
The US supermarket ad hoc committee formed to get barcodes into grocery stores and launched a competition to come up with a better system than the RCA patent.
20:43
The rectangular barcode design created by George Lawrer at IBM was selected as the winner by an ad hoc committee of scientists from MIT, and it was debuted in a real store in Troy, Ohio in 1974.
25:39
The smallest barcode is found on Tootsie Roll Pop sticks, and there are even barcodes on bees to track them.
30:42
The first six numbers of a UPC barcode represent the manufacturer, while the last five numbers represent the specific product and its variations.
35:39
Barcodes do not contain the price of an item, but rather encapsulate various information such as the manufacturer, stock quantity, sale status, and tax, which is then retrieved by the point of sale computer at the checkout.
40:38
The laser scans the white space between the black bars on a barcode, and the combination of spaces and bars in the right way translates into numbers that represent the information associated with the item.
46:06
QR codes are more complex than barcodes and can store a ton more information using dots, hexagons, rectangles, and other shapes, and they work because everyone has a camera in their pocket now.
51:10
QR codes were initially linked to the mark of the beast and considered the mark needed to buy or sell, but this was just an urban legend and rumor.
56:11
The speaker discusses their work with an organization in Kenya that rescues young girls from early forced marriage and female genital mutilation, highlighting the empowerment and success of the rescued girls.
Categories:
Society & Culture
