Barcode is defined as an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows certain data on certain products. It is a series of vertical bars having various widths. Each of the digits, zero to nine are represented by a different pattern of bars. These can be read by a barcode scanner. The barcodes are found on the consumer products for inventory control.
UPC is the Universal Product Code. It is the common standard barcode symbology that is used in the United States. It is used for tracking items in a store. Let us know how it came into existence.
The National Association of Food Chains (NAFC), in1966 held a meeting for discussing the idea for an automatic method for checkout systems. An internal project was developed by the RCA for developing a system that is based on the bullseye code. Later in 1970, certain guidelines were set by the NAFC through the U.S. Supermarket Ad Hoc Committee on Uniform Grocery Product Code. The guideline are meant for the development of a symbol to help in standardizing the approach.
Then in 1972, RCA performed an eighteen month test of their system and printed barcodes on small pieces of adhesive papers. These were attached by the employees to the items along with the price tags. In 1973, IBM designed five versions of the UPC symbology. The data was read by barcode scanner. The experience of scanning was not appreciated then. Later many developments have been made which rose the use of different types of scanners including HP barcode scanner, Symbol barcode scanner, Hewlett barcode scanner and so on.
Currently UPC encodes 12 decimal digits. It is a total of 95 bits. The bit pattern is reliable for scanning. The symbology of UPC is ideal for coding products. It is printed on packages by various processes and allowed to scan.
