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BAR CODES (continued): • Modern optical scanners use the same basic principal introduced by Woodland and Silver: a beam of light passing across the code records the light and dark spaces as electrical pulses, which are fed into a computer that can recognize the series of pulses as characters and match them to products. The information is fed to the computer, which not only knows the price of the item but also acts as an inventory system, tracking how much of any given item is still on hand, how fast it’s being sold, when it will need to be re-ordered, how many coupons have been redeemed, as well as tracking community purchasing patterns. • Bar codes are not just for pricing products. They are also used for tracking inventory on aircraft carriers; for coding blood in blood banks; for following applications in the Patent Office; for identifying people in places like hospitals, libraries, and cafeterias; for sorting baggage at airports; for marking clothing left at the dry cleaner’s; for monitoring radio-collared endangered animals; and for keeping track of logs in lumberyards. The Army uses them to identify ships. Runners in the New York City Marathon don bar codes on their vests and the computer records the order in which they cross the finish line. At the Masters Golf Tournament in Georgia, bar codes on spectator passes prevent scalping and theft of badges. NASA put bar codes on the backs of heat-resistant tiles to make sure they were installed on the correct spots of the space shuttles. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires all hazardous materials have bar codes that can be easily scanned to find out its characteristics in case there’s an accident. • Silver, who died in 1963 at the age of 38, never got to see his invention reach phenomenal proportions. But Woodland was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Bush in 1992.
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