A shopper in a self-scan checkout line looks for the barcode on each product. Otherwise, those patches of fat and thin stripes that appear on everything from books to soup cans get little notice from the public.
But barcodes are becoming more complex and useful. Newer ones may look like layers of stripes and numbers, or geometric shapes or dots that form patterns inside a square or rectangle.
They hold much more information than their predecessors — and that's creating new functions for codes in a variety of industries, and helping consumers to become better informed, shop more efficiently and save money.
"From the checkout at your local store, to hospital wristbands and medicines to manufacturing environments and even the tiles on the Space Shuttle," said Steve Halliday, president of consulting firm High Tech Aid in Richland, "these relatively simple-looking black and white images continue to deliver incredible value."
Western Pennsylvania is a hub of sorts for barcode technology.
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