Barcode Industry Standards are developed by specific industries and government groups to describe how certain symbologies will be used in their applications. For instance, ISBN is standard for the labeling of books. These associations or groups specify how data is encoded into the barcode and they can even impose rules regulating the length of a barcode. Essentially, barcode industry standards define how to use a barcode symbology in a particular application or industry. Here are a few examples of barcode industry standards and what industry groups they are used in:
Industry Standard
Used for
Barcode Symbology
UPC-A or UPC-E
Items sold in the U.S.A or Canada
UPC/EAN
ISBN
Books & Periodicals
EAN-13
SCC-14
Shipping Cartons
Interleaved 2 of 5 or Code 128
LOGMARS
United States Department of Defense Standard
Code 39
ABC Codabar
Blood Bank Tracking
Codabar
In future posts I’ll focus on certain industry standards, such as the Health Industry Barcode Standards(HIBC) and provide detailed information about the applications they are used for.
You’ve all been shopping and have seen someone ring up an item with a barcode scanner, or maybe you’ve worked as a cashier and have been the one ringing up the purchases and using the barcode scanner. In fact, most of you have probably used a self-checkout in a grocery store and haven’t even paid attention to the fact that you were using a fixed barcode scanner. If you look around you, you’ll begin to notice that barcodes are actually a part of your daily life. Shopping, checking out books at the library, receiving your mail, the list goes on and on. But do you really know how it works? What actually allows a barcode to be read by a scanner?
Barcodes are read by sweeping a small spot of light across the barcode symbol. The barcode’s dark bars absorb the light while the white spaces reflect the light. This reflected light is then converted into an electrical signal by a device within the scanner. The electrical signal matches the printed barcode pattern exactly and holds all of the data that was originally encoded in the barcode. The last step is to decode the electrical signal back to the original data and this is done through the use of speedy and inexpensive electrical circuits.
Here is a short clip I shot showing what a UPC looks like when scanned by a Symbol barcode scanner.
