Barcode Scanners Deserve A Little More Appreciation

Most of the technologies that have a far reaching impact get a little appreciation

. Think about the computer, the automobile, and the microwave oven. If we think about what life would be like without them a shiver goes up our spine. You would think that barcode scanners would invoke the same kind of appreciation but they dont. In fact, we rarely even think about them. Thats kind of surprising since barcode scanners should be right up there in the technology Hall of Fame. These hardworking tools touch just about every product that we come in contact with in our daily lives. All you have to do is take a look around and youll see how prevalent barcoding has become.

Take a look in the pantry of your kitchen. Every can, every bottle, and every box has a barcode. That means that at least somewhere along the line these items went through a barcode scanner. Other rooms have just as many barcodesbooks, electronics, you name it.

Barcode scanners began to show up in the 1970s. At the time they were very costly and not entirely accurate. The age of the personal computer had not yet launched so the only companies who had the computing capability to take advantage of barcode scanners were the very large ones. By the 1980s prices had begun to fall dramatically and the PC was becoming more commonplace. Use of barcodes began in earnest. Today barcode scanners are as entrenched in our day to day lives as the computer, the telephone, and the DVD player. In fact, all those items were scanned multiple times before they every entered your home.

The technology is relatively straightforward. Illumination is used to read the barcodes by sending back signals to a sensor. Red light is used because the black stripes of the barcode absorb this light well. Once the sensor has received the reflected light the analog signal is converted to a digital signal. It is the digital signal that is decoded into data that is meaningful to a computerized product database.

Barcode scanners come in a variety of models. The simplest and cheapest are single LED light pens that are swiped across the barcode. LED lights are also used in more sophisticated systems. In these cases there is more than one light used. Probably the most popular of the scanners we see today are the ones that use laser light. There are many advantages to using lasers but the key one seems to be the distance from which you can scan.

In recent years radio frequency identification (RFID) has started to become a viable alternative to barcode scanning. While many proponents consider it to be a better tool for than barcoding it is a difficult sell. To replace barcoding systems with RFID requires a significant capital investment as well as dedication of resources to fconvert existing systems. Over time RFID may become the preferred option for tracking and monitoring products, for the time being barcode scanning is here to stay.

by: Malcolm Nguyen

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