This Week in IT History: Picket Fences
Take a guess how long bar codes have been in use. Twenty years? Thirty? Try more than half a century. In IT years, we're talking Stone Age, 1952. The first item scanned for its bar code in a commercial application was a pack of gum.
Bar codes have evolved since the very first ones, and they're everywhere. You might have seen a few nerds with bar code tattoos. With newer smartphones, a form of bar code dubbed the QR code can now be seen in e-mail messages, magazine ads and Web sites. Just point your smartphone app that reads the QR code and zap! -- you get instant info or redirection to a Web site.
More interesting factoids in this week's IT Webgems segment on Redmond Radio. Listen now!
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/04/2010 at 11:59 AM