The Development of Product Identification We have already seen how important it is becoming to the Empire-Beast to validate the identity of people as our economy is moved toward an increasingly cashless society (see The Identification Problem). Ensuring proper identity is also being extended to things as well as people. This includes the identification of every product that is bought or sold along with virtually every other item that humans use or interact with. This is being made possible in part through barcode technology. In October of 1949, Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver of Philadelphia submitted a patent entitled, “Classifying Apparatus and Method” (US Patent 2,612,994, issued 1952). It described a technique of labeling manufactured articles with tags containing certain patterns of lines or colors. These patterns could be coded with special classifications depending on the product to which they pertained. They envisioned that the code would then become a unique identifier for each item being tagged. In their patent, Woodland and Silver described how a series of white lines on a dark background could be used to carry this encoded data. The spacing and thickness of the lines within the pattern could be interpreted as a particular number sequence for the identification of a product. Special illuminated scanners could be used to read the data contained in the bars as a tagged article was interrogated. Items marked with the code could then be automatically registered and the data maintained by a computer, which was networked to the scanning device. According to Russ Adams writing years ago in Bar Code News, the first scanners “consisted of a transparent conveyor belt onto which the package was placed, symbol side down” (Bar Code News, Mar./Apr., 1986). Strong lights that were pointed up at the code reflected the pattern back down into a photosensitive detector. Tiny fluctuations in the amount of light energy reaching the detector would result in small variations in an electric current, which then could be correlated to the barcode pattern being read. These electrical signals would thus be interpreted as product or item numbers representing the encoded information stored within the barcode pattern. The digital data could then be used for computerized inventory control or any other application that might be helped through automated identification
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:22:52 +0000
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