THE BARCODE

WHAT IS IT?

The barcode is a numerical identification system adapted to be able to be read quickly by an optical-electric system. It's a simple and easy method to encode numeral or textual information, who can be read by electric readers. It let that every product can be found anywhere in the world, swiftly and without error possibilities (1 case in 3.000.000.000).

There are 2 types of barcodes:

-       1D: the information is stored horizontally using a combination of bars and spaces of different sizes. It is used for numerals or letters cods.

-       2D: the information is stored both horizontally and vertically. It has more advantages: dates are reduced to a single source, it has much more storage capacity and is almost invulnerable to sabotage.

HISOTRY

Modern barcode began in 1948. Bernard Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, overheard the president of a local food chain asking to a scientific entrepreneur to develop a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friend Norman Joseph Woodland, a teacher at Drexel of 27 years old, about the food chain president's request. The problem fascinated Woodland and he began to work on the problem.

Woodland's first idea used patterns of ink that would glow under ultraviolet light. Woodland and Silver built a device which worked, but the system had problems with ink instability and it was expensive to print the patterns. So, in 1949, they decided filed a patent application and 3 years later their patent was issued.

Bull's - eye barcode

In 1962 Silver died at age thirty-eight before having seen the commercial use of bar code. Woodland was awarded the 1992 National Medal of Technology by President Bush.

Barcode wasn't commercialized until 1966. The National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) put out a call to equipment manufacturers for systems that would speed the checkout process. In 1967 installed one of the first scanning systems at a Kroger store in Cincinnati. The product codes were represented by "bull's-eye barcodes", a set of concentric circular bars and spaces of varying widths. 

From those applications, they were developed a proposal for an industry-wide bar code system. The result was a Uniform Product Code. Three years later, the Committee recommended the adoption of this symbol (UPC), which today it uses in the USA. It was submitted by IBM and developed by George Laurer, whose work was an outgrowth of the idea of Woodland and Silver. Woodland was an employee at the time of IBM.

MY HOROSCOPE: Capricorn

Today we have searched about our sun sign in the web: http://grupovenus.com to compare and discover if our personality or hobbies seem at the prototype psychological sign. Amazingly the Internet description is equal to me; almost everything is true, from the defects, to my life passions or my goals. I’m an excellent Capricorn!!! Now I am going to tell you the most interesting and realistic coincidendies:

- I was born to be a leader, either in thought or action. I'm never completely satisfied and agree with the ideas of others, unless they are part of my aspirations. I am comfortable working independently or occupying a leadership position. Actually yes, I reconize it difficult to accept and appreciate the opinions of others since my own perfection and requirement at the time to do everything, it has developed me a quite egocentric thought where if something isn't done my way is not correct. And this is why I often prefer to work individually. Is one of the things I have to improve!!!

-  I'm realistic, practical, concrete and I need to feel that my career or business grow a little more each year. Well is true I'm very reasonable person and down-to-earth, but efficient no because my desire for excellence subjected me to do a lot of efforts and to immense loss of time; with which I achieve my goal perfectly , but I also know that making much less than what I do, I could get the same result.

- You are traditional, conservative and with a firm mind; you are not interested in attracting attention nor are you waiting for recognition for your efforts. You are the support of your family and the one who assumes the bulk of responsibilities. Yes, I fight and I work hard to get a personal merit and self-satisfaction; not to leave the rest ridiculous or to be the best. About the family, well, I think we all have a unique and imprescindible paper in its performance, although I recognize that I don't do the domestic task. On the other hand, however, I comply the perfect prototype of the applied and studious daughter, and this is why my parents try to take care of this facet of me since at home I'm lazy and a litlle bit desaster. 

- One of my missions is to direct and guide weaker people, to assume responsibilities and to transmit safety and confidence to those who need it, to teach others to economize, to look at life with realism, to be practical, perfective, and mainly, to be persevering. Well, help others is one of the other things I like to do for inner peace, the fact of feeling good about yourself. I only help those persons that I know they have great difficulty or they really need me, so if I don't help you is because I know that you can fend alone.

- To evolve, your spirit needs to learn to relax, to enjoy life more, and to be less pessimistic or negative. It will be necessary to conquer the inflexibility of your thoughts, the hatred, selfishness and the tendency to be fatalistic. You have to learn to delegate, to rely on others, and not to smother yourself with responsibilities that you assume. In this section there are two things that I'm not in agreement: the pessimism and envy; because I've always considered a person with very optimism and very liberal. Is also true that the word relax in my daily vocabulary doesn't exist, because the stress dominates me so much. I'm not lack of confidence, because I'm proud and secure of myself.