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Types of Barcodes

Learn about the many types of barcodes used for various applications.

What Are Barcodes?

A barcode is a method of machine-readable data identification and collection used in a variety of industries. Most consumers recognize barcodes as the series of thick and thin lines on grocery items for automated reading of an item's price at check out. Barcodes have evolved for use in many different industries since they were first introduced in the 1940s.

History of the Barcode

As predecessor to the barcode, in 1932 Harvard University's Wallace Flint envisioned a punch card system to fully automate consumer purchasing. Because of the prohibitive cost of Flint's system, it was quickly abandoned in the economic wake of the Great Depression. Though Flint's punch card system was a bust, his ideas provided the inspiration for the subsequent invention of the 1D barcode.

As a graduate student in 1948 at the Drexel Institute of Technology, Bernard Sliver overheard a local food chain president inquiring about the development of an automatic processing system for grocery store checkout. Silver teamed up with his friend, Norman Joseph Woodland, to work on developing the system. The pair eventually developed a typical 1D barcode system inspired by Morse code and read by scanners adapted from movie projector technology. Silver and Woodland's invention was patented in 1949.

Types of Barcodes

There are many types of barcodes classed into three broad categories including numeric-only, alpha-numeric, and 2-dimensional barcodes. Traditional 1D, or linear barcodes, consists of a series of lines, whereas 2D barcodes are composed of a dot matrix or other kind of image that must be read by a scanner in two dimensions. Different types of barcodes are grouped together in barcode symbologies. A barcode symbology is a code that interprets a barcode's data based on length, width and spacing of the bars, or in the case of 2D barcodes, based on the spatial relationships between the images in the 2D matrix.

Barcode Applications

The different types of barcodes, or symbologies, have been adapted for use in a variety of applications. Specific types of barcode symbologies are best suited for a particular industry or use, based on the number and types of symbols it can encode. Some common industry uses of barcodes include packaging and shipment, publishing, pharmaceuticals, and identifying retail products for sale in stores. In addition to these applications, there are dozens of highly specialized applications, each with its own variation of barcode symbology.

Shipping

Packaging and shipment barcodes are often used on cargo shipments that may contain a large volume and variety of contents. EAN 128 barcodes are most commonly used in this application, because of the variety of symbols it can encode, providing more detailed information about the shipment, including lot numbers, measurements, quantities, dates, and product details.

Publishing

Books, magazines, and newspapers use a variation of EAN 13 or UPC-A barcodes to record ISBN and ISSN numbers, and may also include pricing information. Sheet music uses another variation of EAN 13 to encode its ISMN number.

Pharmaceuticals

A specific symbology called the Pharma Code has been developed for use in pharmaceutical applications. Other types of barcodes, including variations of Code 39, Code 128, and EAN 128, are used to record production details.

Retail

Retail is the most common application of the barcode and one with which most everyone is familiar. UPC-A and UPC-E are the most common types of barcodes used in North America for retail applications. Barcodes in retail applications are used to encode price and product information for automated scanning of items at checkout.