Many states now repeat all of the printed information digitally, using a bar code or a magnetic stripe or both.
That purchase, at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, was the first anywhere to be rung up using a bar code.
For example, many require the user to scan food items using a bar code scanner when they take them in and out of the fridge.
After five months of tinkering — yes, in their basements, with only their savings to finance the project — the two partners came up with a product that uses a bar code scanner, software and a database.
The key to innovation is using a bar code, instead of a magnetic stripe, to transfer value from the object to the retailer; that means the object can be something besides a thin, plastic rectangle that must be swiped.
The finalists include an application that reduces paper consumption by using a bar code stored on the phone to gain admission to events, and one for the Chinese market that gives real-time mass transit information.
When a low-sided cardboard box containing eight clamshells, known as a flat, was full, the pickers ran with the load on one shoulder to checkers standing near the trucks, who inspected the fruit and credited the flat to the picker using a bar code on the flat's side and on the picker's I.D. badge.
"GoodGuide," an iPhone app, can help consumers too, using a bar code reader to rate products according to personalized, preset "green" user preferences.
Data acquisition proceeded according to previously defined counting protocols that were identified using a bar code read from the side of the rack.
In an intensive care unit a nurse showed me how she read patient records off a computer terminal in the room and made sure that she was giving patients the correct medicine at the correct dose using a bar code scanner.
