How Barcodes Work

Barcodes are everywhere. Those little lines and numbers that make up one of the most recognizable barcodes, the UPC, was designed to make going to the grocery a lot less miserable. It ended up becoming the central symbol of the global economy. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's your old pel Josh. Sorry to cut in,
but just for a second, I'm wanting to let you
know that I'm doing my solo live show, The End
of the World or How I Learned to Start Worrying
and Love Humanity in Minneapolis and in d C. On June.
I'll be in Minneapolis at the Parkway Theater and you

(00:22):
can get tickets by going to the Parkway Theater dot com.
The next night, June, I'll be in Washington, d C,
our Nation's capital, to bring the good word to our
nation's capital. I'll be there at the Miracle Theater and
you can get tickets to that one at the Miracle
Theater dot com. Thanks a lot for coming to see me.
I'll see you this June. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

(00:45):
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
is Stuff you Should Know. Barcodes. Give me some bar codes.

(01:06):
I love them bar codes. Blah. Do you like bar
codes too? Um? Sure, I'm I'm I'm feigning geeking out
because I think bar codes are cool, But I'm not
like a barcode nerd. No, But it is interesting that
like how much of our how much we take them

(01:26):
for granted, and how they're everywhere, and after you listen
to this or we research this, you probably start noticing
them and being like, what secrets lie within you? Exactly
a little black things and spaces in between. Well, hopefully
if they listen to this, they won't have any questions
like that they'll know all the barcode secrets. Well sure,
I hope, Yeah, we'll find out. We'll see. So, like

(01:52):
you said, bar codes are absolutely everywhere, and it is
one of those things where you like, there's one, Oh
my gosh, there's one. There's one over there. Like if
you work at a company, turn your computer over, guarantee
there's a bar code underneath. There's bar codes all over
the place, right, there's one on your forehead. There is
I gotta tattoo this morning just for this episode. Wasn't
it in a movie? I feel like, um, future world

(02:13):
where we all have barcodes? Was the government to put
him on our next Oh? Maybe it was the Apple
add It was the Apple ad was probably I know
exactly what you're talking about I can see a guy
with the shaved head in a suit with a bar
code on the back of his neck. All right, well,
I think there's people yelling at their radio right now, right,

(02:34):
so they're every radio, they're on your computer, they're on
guys next, they're on the computer or on the radio. Um,
and they're actually not that old of an invention. Let
me rephrase that, chuck. They are exactly as old as
you would imagine them to be, right, which is uh,

(02:54):
if you thought about it. This is one of those
things where if you ask someone, they probably able by
stopped talking, if you gave a little bit of thought,
you might think of the other half of what makes
a barcode necessary or able to be used, which is
the laser. And that was the big reveal. Well, they
can't have preceded the laser. It kind of did, actually though.

(03:17):
Well yeah, sure the idea, but it took them in
concert to actually do anything worthwhile, right exactly. Um, basically,
we're both just a couple of lumps and put us
together and we took off like the UPC code protocol.
So so um back, let's let's let's set the scene,

(03:38):
shall we. All right, are we way back in it here. Sure,
all right, Jerry, Thank you, Jerry. Jerry launched us. So. Um,
when you think about bar codes, you think grocery store typically, right,

(03:59):
I think anything, Sure, I think grocery store. I think
anything you can anywhere you can buy something or yeah, okay,
that's much more dead on. But mine makes sense too,
because it was in the grocery store that the whole
issue of bar codes, the whole reason we have bar
codes to begin with, really began because it used to
be a genuine, bona fide mess going to the grocery store. Yeah.

(04:25):
I mean, and this was back when people weren't even
in a hurry. Um yeah, imagine now, like my mom
was a uh cashier at Kroger in the nineteen sixties.
So she has remarked about how fast she was typing
in those numbers, and now people like going through her
line because she was just brew right, she was typing

(04:47):
in those numbers. Is the key here? Yeah? But no,
I mean there is no Well we haven't done the
John Henry test. Maybe maybe Diane was so fast it's
she could beat the laser, especially these days, because you know,
sometimes it seems like they can take longer when they
scan it and scan it and scan it and then

(05:07):
type in the tiny number. Right, But your mom may
have been an anomaly. For the most part. If you
went and checked out in a line at a grocery store,
you had to wait way longer than you do these days,
because it wasn't Chuck's mom it was checking you out.
It was some other person who to lift up the
can't find the price label on it, type in the price,

(05:29):
type in the tax, and then pick up the next
thing and do the same thing. Heaven forbid that sticker
fell off, yes, or they got over price. Check on
Aisle seven earl and see what the Alpa costs. So
you've got that problem, right if it goes on sale.
That's another thing too that you have to go through

(05:51):
and relabel all those cants. Right, So that's where you
got the price was. It was labeled by some guy
with a gun. Remember that movie Oh God would John
Denver and George Burns. I always whenever I hear of
a dude like pricing um something in a supermarket with
a price, That's what I think of it that I
think the first scene where he meets God, Yeah he

(06:12):
was a supermarket manager, right, yeah, he was so um.
That's how the price got on there. That was one
problem that you had hand labeling prices and then hand
typing it in. But there's also the key of inventory.
The only way to tell how much stuff you had
in a store at any given time was to go
through and count everything in the store and in the

(06:34):
back room, and then you would know what you needed
to order. So supermarkets were frequently out of stuff. The
lines were very long. It was a nightmare unless your
mom was the cashier, which is one reason why barcodes
were first invented and adopted into grocery stores, because it
became so clear so early on that they could solve

(06:55):
this enormous problem in one fell swoop if they could
only get a system in place that perfected it. Yeah.
So in the thirties there was a guy who wrote
a thesis paper at HAVID named Wallace flint Um where
he invented an automated grocery system with punch cards and
flow wrecks and such. Didn't really take off, but it

(07:15):
was an interesting precursor. I think anytime you have punch
cards involved, it's not gonna take off, right unless that's
how we vote in this country, um, and you see
how that worked out. So flash forward Philadelphia in the
nineteen forties. That was a grocery store manager who was
like Josh, he was pretty upset and riled up about
time and how long it's all taking and running out

(07:38):
of stuff. And he went to Drexel. Uh, I guess
it's dressed Drexel University Now was a Drexel? I t
back then? Or was it? Two different? Things? Could be offshoot?
Maybe there are copycats. All right, we'll like, yeah, we're
in Drexel too. I looked at their mascot. By the way,
they're the Dragons, specifically their mascot that dresses up for

(08:00):
basketball games as Mario the Magnificent. Huh, it's a little
odd for a dragon. Yeah, he's he's named after. Apparently
they're like oldest basketball fan or something. Okay, that makes sense.
Sure what happens to be a dragon? Anything? Rao dragons. So,
like I said, can you help me Drexel? I need

(08:20):
help because I'm a grocery store managers taken forever. The
dean said, no, no, not really. But there was a
student there, a grad student name Bob Silver, who's stuck
that in his pocket. As they say, walked away and
went to his friend who who was a grad of
Drexel name Joe Woodland, because I guess he knew Joe
was the man for ideas like this. And Woodland said, yeah,

(08:43):
I think, uh, I think we could come up with something.
He said, we're in Philadelphia, let's go down to Miami
Beach and think about this. Yeah, because years from now
that's where the I smell will be dreamed up. It
was Miami Beach too, That's why it seemed familiar, it
wasn't it. Yeah, it seemed familiar to me, and I
was like, wait a minute, Oh that's right. So the
I smell and the UPC symbol we're both dreamed up

(09:04):
on Miami Beach and to life crew. Um. So yeah,
Apparently he goes to the beach starts dreaming of like
Morse code. Basically, what he's trying to figure out is
what can we use to represent like the price and
like the stock number. That's really what they were trying
to boil it down to use. If you have that
in one little component, then then that can be scanned

(09:30):
and exactly, um it could be scanned, it could be
um typed in. However, you need to do it, but
it could bring up a lot more information and you
could do it a lot faster because it could tell
you things like there's only two left, you better order, right,
that kind of thing. So, like you said, he figured
out Morse code. He was kind of inspired on Miami
Beach to use Morse code. But then something really weird happened.

(09:53):
He types some lines and some dots, typed with his fingers, um,
and the sand in the hand, typed in the sand,
and then he just pulled his fingers downward in the
sand and turned him into lines. I figured he was
drunk or something maybe, so I just kind of he
was slurring his sand line right, And um, that was

(10:15):
the beginning of the first u PC symbol. And it
was way different than what you would think because what
they ended up coming up with was not just lines
like we see today, but circles concentric concentric circles like
a bull's eye. Yeah, it looks like uh, it looks
like a record like an LP Yeah. Basically, Um, so

(10:35):
that was it. Like if this was the movie, And
after all, they made a movie about Winchell wipers with
Greg Kenear, So why hasn't this been made I don't know.
That would be the moment where he draws those lines
in the sand and like a halo glows around them
and like two live crew starts playing back. Then How

(11:00):
great would that be? Um? So yeah, that's where it
was born. Uh, those two dudes, Woolen and Silver, they
came up with a machine because that was kind of
the problem. It's like, great, we figured out this barcode thing,
but it's useless unless you had a reader. And their
reader was huge and expensive and heavy and dangerous. It
sounds like it was like the size of a desk,

(11:21):
and back then desks were really big. That's like says
of a bus today. They also used in a scilloscope
as the reader, right, which I for life, we can't
figure out how they did that, um, because that detects
like electrical pulses. But the upshot of it was that
a scilloscope with a five hundred bulb they got super
dangerously hot when they put it together with those two kids.

(11:44):
These were grad students at the time or they just
recently graduated. Um, they put together the first machine that
could read printed material. That's pretty cool, right. So it
just so happened that that printed material was a printed
bulls eye upc code. There's a big problem that they
were missing something very important, and that was uh microcomputer,

(12:05):
something that could read this code and make sense of it. Um.
They hadn't quite come up with that, so they said,
you know what, let's just forget about this. We'll put
it in dad's garage like a trampoline, sell it to
our c A. Well, yeah, they sold the patent right right,
and then we're gonna head off to go work for IBM.
And that's where the big scene with the glowing and

(12:26):
two live crew would have ended, maybe in a montage
or something. Right. Uh so we I spoiled it, I
guess um with the laser. But in nine was when
the first laser was debuted. And this was really key
to read this thing because the reason they used a
five D lightbulb wasn't because they were just like, man,

(12:48):
this is so cool and hot and dangerous, Like you
needed a tremendous amount of light to read these tiny um,
I mean super detailed. You know, it's not detail old
with like lettering that we're used to seeing, but it
was deep. He had to read the detail right because
and it also has to be kind of small too. Yeah,
it can't be at the size of they can right exactly, um,

(13:10):
or you know, something bigger than the size that they can.
It has to be fairly small and it is fairly
detailed and um, so you need a really bright light
to read it. Well. Luckily, eventually the Hughes Corporation came
up with the laser and that was very quickly implemented
with the bar code system, not in grocery stores at first,
but on the railroad. It turns out, yeah, this was um,

(13:34):
this guy figures pretty prominently. His name is David Collins,
and he had a company called Computer Identics Corporation. And
what he came up was the first in nine, the
first bar code reader that actually worked without you know,
five lightbulbs, using that laser to keep check of freight
cars because the railroad companies would swap freight cars with

(13:57):
one another all the time, but you'd end up some
guy would always keep your freight car and be like,
I don't know, just talk about yeah. So he sold
two of those in nineteen nine m I T. Grad
and that that kind of changed the game because all
of a sudden it was being implemented not in grocery
stores like you said, but grocery store uh people, workers, managers, owners, uh,

(14:20):
industry leaders. I think they took notice. They did, especially
again named Alan Hallerman, who basically led the charge to
get this stuff into supermarkets. And there was a pilot
program that was at a Kroger like the one your
mom worked at about the time where she would have
worked for Kroger. But this is up in Cincinnati, which
I think is where Kroger was founded. Yeah, she was

(14:42):
in Tennessee, I think. And our c A had been
looking for new projects to um to to work on,
and they found this old patent that r c A
bought from Woodland and so, yeah, what about this old thing?
Is it a bulls eye? Like? No, check it out.
So they put laser to bull's eye and ran this
pilot program in in Cincinnati at Krogrin it went okay

(15:06):
ish for a new thing, It did all right, But
we mentioned how they had to be able to read
these intricate little barcodes. Um printing wasn't great, so any
smudges or smears or anything would just throw the whole
system off, right, But it was enough of a proof
of concept that that the these um grocery store industry
leaders led by Alan Holderman, said we've got to get

(15:29):
this out into grocery stores. So they formed we got
to mention the name of their group. You're ready for it? Okay?
They formed the US Supermarket ad Hoc Committee on a
uniform Grocery Product code. What does that spell? U S
A h C, U G p C, it spells nothing
or nothing, it spells a barcode um. I read somewhere

(15:53):
that this guy, he would when he was lobbying supermarket
managers and leaders I us to like buy into this.
He would take them to go see Deep Throat. I
read that it was the fashion of the day to
like go out for a steak dinner. And then everybody
went and watched Deep Throat in the movie theater as
part of like a business meeting. Do you get the

(16:15):
steak dinner before or after that? Before parents are really
to oh dear, Well, let's take a break and ruminate
on that question and we'll be right back. Change. So

(16:55):
the um, the U S Supermarket at Hot Committee on
a unifor ARM grocery product code hanging out at the
ad committee in the porno theater. Sure we can call
him the ad HUT Committee from now on, all right,
that's wanting to get it in one more time. And um,
they decided that yes, the r c A patent with
the bulls eye was pretty good, but it hadn't worked

(17:17):
that good. Is it possible or something better? And this
is pretty forward thinking, um at the time if you
think about it too, to say like, yes, this works,
this company has a patent on it. Forget about that.
Could we do better? And they actually launched like a
national basically a competition to come up with something better. Yeah,
And this was sort of in the face of manufacturers

(17:38):
who weren't too crazy about this idea to begin with,
because it would be on them obviously, like Campbell's Soup
to start putting these codes on their soup cans. And
no one really wanted to do it because of they
have their own systems in place. It would cost some
money and time, and they were just like, hey, it
ain't broke on our end. What's funny is this this article?
I think this part came from a smith sony An

(18:00):
article where they're saying, like cardboard manufacturers thought it would
spoil their product, like it's so beautiful, this box of
of apple cinnamon oatmeal cannot be spoiled with a with
a UPC code. Yeah, that's weird, but that was part
of the pushback apparently, was they thought it would mess
up the product, right, but they gave then. I guess

(18:20):
they were I'm sure they were talked into the fact
that they could move more product with this. In the end,
they were taken to see deep through and they just
caved like a house of cards. They're like, man, that
stick was good and so was the cinema. Um. So
seven people, like you said, submitted seven companies, and um
if you go and look at these seven submissions, it's

(18:41):
interesting that some of them, like one was like the
LP bull's eye. There was another circular one, but it
looked like no, no, it looks like if kid draws
the sunshine. It was like all the lines were going
out from the center. There were a few different variations
that sort of look like the modern barcode and in theory.

(19:04):
But then it's it's so funny when you look at
the seven side by side, you immediately go to that
little rectangular when you're like, oh, well, yeah, just because
we're used to it. But I don't know if at first,
if people just looked at it like the bulls in
one was pretty, it is. The sunshine one was nice.
I think I've seen the Sunshine one and like cartons
of milk or orange juice, like on the bottom of

(19:25):
paper cartons. I've seen that before, I know. Yeah, so
I guess somebody adopted. There was a little half circle
one too, that looks sort of like a rainbow sticker.
It's very cute. That is cute. But the kicker here
is is that IBM um sort of at hour, I
guess heard about this. We're like, hey, yeah, we'll throw

(19:45):
in a bid. They're like, oh, well, what have you developed?
And they're like, we haven't developed anything because we just
heard about this. But Grapevine, Joe Woodland, the guy who
invented this other one works for us. Sure, ironically, Joe
Woodland didn't have anything to do with their design though.
Who was it George Laura? The story is all over
the place. It really is interesting how many different like

(20:08):
directions it took, how many times they saw a deep
throat over and over again as this process was going on.
Just stop saying those words, just say cinema. But there
was a guy there named George Laura at IBM and Uh.
The advantage he had, or at least says he saw it,
and I agree, is that he hadn't seen all these

(20:28):
bulls eyes and sunshines and rainbows, and he was he
kind of started from scratch and built that beautiful little rectangle.
That was his premise that he was like, I'm unadulterated
with any any conceptions IBM, didn't have any pre existing
machinery that this thing needed to fit into nothing. He
got to start from scratch. And actually his idea panned

(20:51):
out because his was selected the ad hoc committee I'll
spare everybody UM met in New York, and they actually
tapped some scientists from m I T because they said,
who are the smartest scientists around? M I T scientists?
Here are the how many was it seven or eleven designs? Seven? Okay,
here are the seven designs and my T scientists, you, guys,

(21:13):
tell us which one you think is right. But then
this Alan Haberman, he said, hold on before you, guys,
tell us, can you give me a confidence interval of
how how confident you are that you have picked the
right one? And all of them were at like confident
and it was lours rectangle that one that's right. Uh. Interestingly,

(21:38):
they had demonstrated the rectangular one with a bean bag
ashtray and the a softball picture, Yeah, which is picture, Like,
is there anything better than the bean bag ashtray? Those
are great? Yeah? We got those in college. Like I
searched them out just because they you know, because they
were always plaid and looked like they were from the

(21:59):
fifth You never smoked, did you. Well, I mean I
spoke to a little in college, but we we had
ashtrays around. He still wanted to provide for your guests.
See this is in college, you know. Yeah, that's trays.
Maybe a little snack caddy to go with the cocktails.
But we had a few of those bean bag ashtrays,
and uh they were pretty great, and mostly because you
could put them on a dashboard of a car and
they would stay there right or on your belly. Well

(22:22):
you're popin sure, Sure they'd stay wherever you want them to. So,
like you said, Laura, one the big they had a
big party I'm sure with rectangular um or derve's all
arranged in perfect lines, eating out of bean bag ashtrays.
Oh god. Uh. And then on June nine, they debuted

(22:43):
it in a real store, um in Troy, Ohio, Marsh
Marsh Supermarket. Yeah, I've not heard of it. I still
I thought you might have been like, oh, yeah, the
old days of the Marshes and Toledo. No, we had
I g a food Town Kroger, that's it. Yeah, that's
all I can remember. And foods with a Z foods. Uh.

(23:10):
I don't know why that. That's the first thing I
can think of. Um, So they had this the whole
checkout counter I see is translated into day's dollars. But
forty four grand is what that thing would have cost today. Yeah,
and just the scanner itself was more than seventeen grand
of that in today's dollars. Yeah, and today you can
get a scanner for about twenty bucks. So this is

(23:33):
the This is a pretty nice set up for the
Marsh's store in Troy, Ohio. And the just one register
to right, it was out of However, many of the
rest of them. We're having the type. Can't you be
more like sharing Buchanan's over here on the on the
uh the laser checker. Yeah, that was the real name.
By the way, it sounds like you just totally improptered that. No,

(23:55):
it came out of my memory. No, but we should
give her her do. Yeah. She was the first cash
year to to scan an item with a UPC code,
And the first item that was scanned was a ten
pack of juicy fruit gum. Yeah. I bet the guy
what was his name, Richard Dawson. Now that was family feud,
Clyde Dawson, his brother, right, he was ahead of R

(24:17):
and D for marsh and he played the first shopper.
And I wonder if he was like, hm, let's see
because his fruit stripes is nothing but striped lines. I
wonder if he was trying to throw him off. I
don't know, like scan this. Supposedly he chose gum because
a lot of people were like, well what about gum,
You're never gonna be able to get one of these

(24:37):
things on gum. But then he chose a ten pack
of gum, so he was kind of hedging his bets whatever.
But it was what the smallest one smallest barcodes are, uh,
the smallest I saw they have No bees have barcodes
like on them. Somehow, I haven't figured out how. I
didn't see how. I just know that bees have bar codes.

(24:57):
You mean bees, the insect yes, with the z um
what do you mean to track them or something? What? Yeah? Um,
so that's got to be pretty small. But the smallest
product I saw with the barcode is, um, the roll
pop sticks have the barcode on them. Really did you do, researcher,
You were just eating its role pop? How many licks

(25:20):
did it take to get to the center. I've never
made it right, I always crunch like the owl says. So,
I guess we should talk about how these things work
because it's interesting, it's super wonky. But um, I think
I don't know, it's good for people to understand this
to a certain degree, whatever degree you're comfortable with with learning. Well, okay,

(25:42):
you ready? Yeah, Well, first, there's two kinds we should differentiate,
between the barcodes and QR codes. Yeah, a barcode is
technically a linear one D code, just sum code, just
lines basically. Um. The two D codes like the q
R quick response codes, like the as you see on
you know, happen in products and items these days, marketing materials,

(26:05):
maybe business card. It's actually becoming even more of a
thing from what I understand, just because there's so much
stuff you can encode in it. Um, how many characters
like something. Yeah, you can encode seven thousand digits or
four thousand characters of text, and so you can encode
some pretty sophisticated stuff in there. So people encode um

(26:27):
web addresses or pictures or whatever. I've seen them on tours,
Like you can do a QR code and bring up
like a bunch of text about the painting or whatever.
I think it's kind of yes, I've seen that as well. Um,
I think that it's kind of becoming less popular as
a marketing tool, but simultaneously it's becoming more popular in

(26:48):
just about every other Yeah. Barcodes, on the other hand,
the one D bar code can hold up to eighty
five characters, so these two ds are like exponentially more
um potent storehouses of information. Yeah, but I like the
simplicity of the bar code. It's pretty cool, like you

(27:09):
don't need it does exactly what you need in nothing else, yes,
you know. Yeah, And so so when we're talking about
a bar code, most people think of a universal product code,
which is a one D linear bar code. It's a
type of it. It's not the only kind. There's a
bunch of one D linear bar codes, but the most
readily recognizable one, especially in the US and Canada, is

(27:32):
called the UPC. Right, so let's say you're a company
and you have a product um that you want a debut,
and what you would do is, since nine seven, you
would uh ring up company out of Brussels called g
s I g S one. Oh is that a one?
Don't call g S I. You're not gonna get your

(27:54):
stuff on the shelves crime scene investigation. God man, you're
just flying with the singers. Yeah, all right, not all
of them are good. Well I didn't say they were. Okay,
I would like to save your applause. I'll save it.
So the g S one, what you do is you

(28:14):
pay an annual fee as a manufacturer, and then you say, hey,
I have this new thing. I want to apply for
permission to enter the UPC system. That's what that's the
martial brain way of putting it. Yeah, basically like, hey,
I want to be registered in the official system. They
right back and they say, all right here, uh new manufacturer,

(28:35):
you have a six different six digit identification number. I
imagine if you were like the Coca Cola company, you're
already set up with us. Well, if they had to
eventually start somewhere. Well, right, but now when Coke develops
a new product or whatever, they don't they just give
them the new uh the manuaf the item numbers exactly,

(28:55):
So the first six numbers. So if you look at
a UPC bar code, it is a there are a
bunch of bars and that's for the computer to read,
and then there's a twelve numbers that's for humans to
read and actually punch in if the machine has problems
with it. Okay, so it's actually the same information but
in two different languages technically, so you could technically probably

(29:17):
teach yourself that language if you just looked at these lines,
you totally could. You could. Um. It would be probably
the most useless thing you've ever done in your life,
especially if you're not in the UPC code industry and
there is an industry, But you could do that, and
we're gonna teach you how, right, uh in a minute.
But um, if at every big company there is a

(29:40):
UPC coordinator and I imagine full departments that handle this stuff,
it depends. You can also if you're a small company,
you can contract out with a company that basically does
it for you. Um, Like if you want to sell
on Amazon, but you're not like a big company you
have to have a UPC symbol. But it could be
it could make no sens money wise for you to

(30:01):
go to g S one and get a UPC symbol
rather than just getting it from a reseller. Yeah. So
if you're a huge corporation, though it's in house, you
have a coordinator and a team, and anytime you have
a product or launch a new product, you're gonna have
to assign that new product a number, and it's got
to be very specific to that product. It can't. You

(30:24):
can't just say, well, you know, Cocus coke, so two leader,
twelve pack, single, twelve ouncer, sixteen ouncer, they're all the same, right,
which means that the first six numbers of a UPC
code for coke is going to be the same on
any bottle or can or whatever you pick up of coke.
Because the essentially says the Coca Cola company and whatever

(30:46):
language right to the entire world anywhere in the world
where they use bar codes, if they gets scanned, it's
going to come up as a Coke product. That's right,
those last five numbers, it's up to coke and that
upc coordinator that employed by Coke to come up with
new numbers for each not just coke and diet coke
and new coke and cherry coke and orange vanilla coke,

(31:09):
which have you had? It's weirdly good. Um, you have
to come up with not just a different number for
each of those, you have to come up with a
different number for each of those, and each size and
each way that those sizes are put together ever as
they call it in the business, right, so a different
a different one for one twelve ounce can of coke
or a six pack of cokes or case of cokes, um,

(31:32):
and so on and so forth. And I was on
that g S one site and the way that they
put as much simpler. If you have one T shirt
that you sell, right, it's a Vitamin S Y s
K T shirt, which you can get even better. It's
great T shirt. If you ask me, you like that one? Right?
I love it. I think it's the colors on it
that really get me. Um. But you have one T shirt,

(31:54):
a Vitamin S Y s K shirt. But that thing
comes in four different sizes small, Media, large, extra large,
and it comes in four different colors. You need sixty
four different Um, is that right? Four by four sixteen
by four sixty four? You need sixty four different UPC
codes for for that one product, that one T shirt.

(32:18):
And UPC code is one of those dumb things like
saying a t M machine, What do you mean, well,
machine machine universal product code? You know, thank you for
calling me out on that. I actually went through this
article and like got the instances of UPC code, like
I defy you to find it. So I wasn't being pedantic,

(32:43):
but I was doing it for the people who are
already thinking that. Um, and there there were people out
there thinking that. So the last digit is called a
check digit, and this is basically a bit of a
fail safe to make sure that the scanner got everything right. Yeah,
it's really convoluted how it does that. Yeah. There, I mean,

(33:06):
there's a calculation every time you scan something or every
time something scan for you. Rather, Um, do you check
out yourself at the grocery store? Do you like that deal?
I don't because I very strongly see or clearly see
that they're replacing human cashiers, and I think human cashiers
like to do human cashier work. So I go to

(33:26):
the human cashier whenever I can I love the self
check out do Yeah? Because I like bagging my stuff
very specifically, so that's why I do it. Like like
cold with cold or chunky items or stuff that contain fat.
I mean, you know, I could go over my whole
system for everyone to tears come on, but a lot
of cold with cold size like sizes where it goes

(33:49):
in my house as I'm unpacking. Uh, and more than anything,
just efficiently packed so it all fits. I have a
bit of a tetracy brain when it comes to packing things,
and so I get a little, um, I get not
a little. I get really uncomfortable when I see someone
else doing it and it's all wrong really, even when
it's not your groceries. Like if you look over and

(34:10):
now I don't know, Yeah, I can't even look at that.
I just look away. So that that's my cross to
bear though. Yeah, you're doing a great job. But anyway,
when they're checking, when they scan something, that calculation is
performed every time something is scanned to make sure that
check digit calculates out that this is the correct price

(34:31):
for this thing. However, to me, the fact of the podcast,
the Barcode does not contain a price, No isn't that remarkable. Yeah,
Remember we said the thing that that the reason barcodes
were invented was so that they can encapsulate information about
that that item. Right, One of the pieces of information

(34:53):
that it encapsulates is price, but it also encapsulates how
many are in stock, whether it's on sale, um, what
tax you you put onto it, um, who manufactures it,
what size, some item description, all of this stuff, and
it's all encoded in that bar. But no one thing
is encoded into that. It's just that when you enter

(35:14):
that number, either by scanning it into the computer or
by punching those numbers in that that information goes to
the point of sale computer in the store and it
returns all that information to the to the checkout. Yeah,
that's kind of I don't know the fact of the
podcast for me because like when you scan it, the

(35:35):
price pops up, and I just automatically thought, well, sure,
that's encoded in those bars. Yeah, there is no way
for you to look at a u PC symbol and
discern the price, even if you can read the bars,
because the price the one of the reasons it's invented
so you can alter the price without having to mess
go through and hand label everything. Remember that was one
of the reasons why. Yeah, the problem is is that

(35:56):
means that there is such a thing as um scanner scamming,
which some state senator felt pretty good about him or
herself for coming up with that phrase. But there there's
um where there are some untoward retailers or merchants who
will mess with the price of something and hope you
don't notice, and charge you more, even if it's by

(36:17):
a few cents. We all saw office space that adds up,
you know. Um. And since we're there, you mentioned the
Michigan law. I did look that up because they do
have a law, and I didn't yet. Well, the result
of the Michigan law against scanner fraud is the seller
pays and this to avoid a lawsuit. But you can

(36:37):
technically bring a lawsuit against the company, but they can
just all they can take care of it right here
and brainard if they want to. So the seller pays
the buyer the amount equal to the difference between the
displayed price and the charge price, plus an amount equal
to ten times that difference. So you think that's whopping. Well,

(36:59):
I mean, let's say your charg ar for something that's
so you get that dollar. A million dollars, you get
that dollar plus ten times the difference with a maximum
of five dollars, because I thought, oh man, you could
really clean up if they really mislabeled like a TV. Yeah,

(37:19):
but it's not up to five dollars. That's where they
cut it off. But that's why, to me, that's a
measuring stick for a good grocery stores without flinching, they
when they confirmed that there has been a discrepancy between
the scanned price and the price that they have on
the shelves listed, um that they just give you the
item Publis does. Okay, that's why I'm a public shopper

(37:41):
right that in the sheet cake, it's really good. They
also have this line of special limited edition ice cream
right now, and I wanted to declare everyone, if there's
a publics near you get to the public find their
special edition hosted Smore ice cream and enjoy arguably the

(38:05):
greatest ice cream ever in good. It's good. Good doesn't
even begin to describe it. I've had a lot of
small ice creams. You're going to love. This is better
than other small ice creams. Okay, you're going to love it. Man,
public's need to sponsor us. We throw them so much
love they really should. All right, well, let's take another break,
and we're gonna come back after this and talk a
little bit more about how these things are red Chuck.

(38:54):
All right. Another fact of the podcast for me is
that the laser technically is scanning the white space between
the black bars, both the black bars and the spaces. Yeah,
I mean, but it's you know what I'm saying. I mean,
is that like me thinking about it, like looking at picture,
is it an old lady or a young lady? Kind
of Yeah. But to the to the scanner in the sensor,

(39:17):
more more directly, the sensor in the scanner that's getting
the bounce back. The black lines on the UPC code
don't reflect back into the scanner. The white lines are
the absence of the black lines do. But both of
those things. The fact that the light didn't bounce without
the black exactly, it's a very like like Zen invention um.

(39:39):
The fact that some bounce back and some didn't means
something to the to the computer that's attached to the scanner.
And this this is where the whole thing kind of
gets translated into numbers, which then are put together to
become the UPC number that is associated with the information
associated with the item. Right, So if you look at

(40:01):
these bars, if you study next, let you pick up
a can of soup, turn it over and look at it.
The very thinnest bar that you're gonna see, UH is
one unit wide you can call it that, sure, And
then every other bar that you see is either one
unit wide, two, three, or four units wide, and that's

(40:22):
the maximum width UH is going to be four units, right,
And so not just the bars are one, two, three
or four units wide, the spaces are also one to
three or four units wide. Right. So there is when
you put a combination of spaces and bars together in
the right way, you will end up as far as
the computer is concerned with a zero or a one

(40:43):
or two. For example, to come up with a zero,
you have, um, a three unit wide bar, a two
unit wide space, yeah, a one unit wide bar, and
then a one unit wide space. That's a zero. When

(41:04):
you see that what I just said, go back, listen
to it over and over again until you get it. Um,
that is is that to the computer is a zero? Yeah? Okay,
I wonder if you would have messed that up, if
there would have been anyone that would be like, actually, Josh,
because a little something like this, right, yeah, that would

(41:24):
be remarkable. Maybe. So I'm sure there are bar code
walks out there. There has to be, I mean there.
That's just the fact that there's this major industry associated
with with creating and selling and leasing bar codes. Surely
people can just look at it and know what. I'm
sure there are people like ham Radio hams a better
into this. It seems really complex and difficult to us,

(41:46):
but if you step back, it's really simple. And yeah,
being exposed to it day in and day out, you
would you couldn't help but memorize it. I would think,
are we onto the QR codes or well, there's one
more thing. If you'll look at a bar code, the
first two there are two lines, and then the numbers start.
There are another two lines in the middle, and then

(42:06):
there are two more lines at the ist and they
are larger than the rest of the bar code. Those
are separators. Those are separators, guidelines, whatever you want to
call them. And in the middle, those middle two lines
actually cut the bar code in half. And when that happens,
so that the bar code can be scanned any direction,
the rules turned into the mirror image. So where a

(42:31):
zero would have been like UM, three unit wide space
followed by a two unit wide bar, it would be
a three unit wide bar followed by a two unit
wide space, and so on. It's it's the same number.
It's just the mirror image of it. And that tells
the scanner, Hey, just go ahead and show off, show

(42:53):
everybody that you can read backwards and forwards. Yeah, and
that was I mean, we didn't even mention at the beginning.
There were um civic specs when everyone was developing those
seven uh test whatever submissions, and one of them was
you've got to be able to do these things forward
and backwards, guys, Yeah in your sleep, Yeah, on beam

(43:14):
bag as trade, it doesn't matter. Yeah. There was also
a size requirement of course, UM and other things like that,
but forwards and backwards had to be in there, right,
I guess for I don't know, convenience. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
I think that they wanted. I think that the the
Cincinnati pilot program bulls I one was touchy enough that
they're like, we it can't be like that. It's got

(43:36):
to be like really tough and accurate. You got you
can just drop this thing accidentally and it will ring
it up. Got which happens sometimes, Yeah, it does. And
then you when you're bagging, when you're doing it yourself.
That's the only problem is when you have a problem,
because then you've got to call the person over. Oh
that's the worst, and that person has you know, they're
managing eight different registers. Move and then the people in

(44:02):
line behind you're like, ah, I should just gone to
the cashier line. This guy he's no cashier, he's no Diane.
Have you noticed also that that retailers, companies, stores are
why do you just put that in scare quotes, hurting people,
hurting people more towards self service by having fewer and
fewer human run checkout lanes open at a time. Yep,

(44:26):
I haven't noticed that. It's bugging me. Yeah, I I
just I bugs me. So when you go to a store,
do you um have a friendly conversation with your cashier?
Usually you don't even interact. Then you just know, like
them having their job and being quiet about it. I guess, okay, No,
of course I do a chat with people. I'm a

(44:48):
friendly guy. By the way, we should shout out. I didn't.
Uh was his name Brian. I was in a major
big box flat pack furniture store over the weekend, which
one and a guy approaches me with a Josh sent
me shirt and I took a picture. He was very nice.
I think his name was Brian, but he's like, I
don't want bugy. I was like, dude, you know you're

(45:09):
wearing it. Don't be dumb shirt. It's like, you gotta
come up to me and say something. And I asked
if he minded if I took a picture of him,
and I texted it to you. I know, I got it.
And uh, I was like, Chuck's texting me on a weekend.
This must be good. He's quitting the show, can't take
it anymore, won't be there Tuesday period. Um. Yeah, it's

(45:30):
kind of cool to see him out in the wild. Anyway,
back to QR codes, Uh, these are way more complex.
If you look at a QR code or a two
D barcode, which by the way, came around which is
hard to believe. I mean it seems like at least
a two thousands thing. Um, but this, like we said,
can store a ton more information. Vertically. Horizontally, they use dots, hexagons, rectangles,

(45:56):
they use bulls eyes, which is kind of ironic. Um,
I don't when I look at a QR code, I
don't see any of those shapes you see, like the
one bigger shape mostly yeah, right, I mean I just
see a bunch of blocks. Well, yeah, that's that's the
most universal one, just like the u PC is the
most universal one D linear. That QR code is a

(46:19):
type of two dcode, but there are ones that have
tons of different like patterns and stuff. To you just
gotta stare at him, man, yeah, and then it all
you're like, oh, it's a donkey right. What were those
called the Magic I poster? Yeah? I used to enjoy this.
I always got it. Eventually. I think we didn't do
a show on these, did we. I don't think so

(46:39):
we talked about it, but it sounds like a short
stuff to me. It does. Let's do it, okay. So, uh,
QR codes work because like, uh, basically because everyone has
a camera in their pocket now, because you have to
have a very complex reader on hand, and that is
a camera. Basically. Yeah, if you run a product with

(47:00):
a QR code through a supermarket scanner, one D scanner
will say like does not compute smoke will come out
of it, it will spin around, it won't be good.
So you need an image recognition software to scan a
two D code. But the camera on your phone does
a really fine job, which is why you're starting to
see them everywhere, like in museums, on tours and things

(47:22):
like that. Yeah. I use one just the other day
on a home security camera. Um. They have a little
QR code on the bottom and to get it going,
you just point your camera at it and it locks
it in. I know exactly the one you're talking. Yeah, So, Chuck,
I think we've been kind of dancing around what's ultimately
the biggest question of this whole podcast, and really the
reason we created it, is the UPC code, the mark

(47:45):
of the Beast, the devil's mark. How did you know
about this? Because I have never heard this. Had you
heard this or did you just come across it? I
knew paranoid people in the nineties, so I was familiar
with this. So refer to our Satanic Anik episode as background.
But apparently when these things started coming out, Um, there

(48:07):
were people or maybe this is all urban legend. No, no,
there were I saw a reference that Pat Roberts and
somebody tried to link to a video of Pat Robertson
on The Seven Club talking about this in it. I
couldn't find the video, but it's possible what you're saying
from what I saw, it started out as a real thing,
all right. Well, it all goes to the Book of
Revelation in the New Testament. Where as everyone knows, if

(48:31):
you've read the Bible, revelation is when they talk about
it's when the Bible gets really good, and it's when
it talks about the apocalypse and the Beast and uh,
you know, raining fire down from the heavens and stuff,
and it says this, uh, he causes all both great
and small, rich and poor, free and slave to receive
and he is the Beast, right sure, yeah, Satan uh

(48:54):
to receive a mark on their right hand or on
their foreheads. Didn't say back in the neck that no
one may buy or sell except one who has the
mark or the name of the Beast or the number
of his name. Somehow this got locked into the fact
that QR code or I'm sorry, barcodes were now on
products like that was the mark to sell. Yeah, that

(49:18):
was the thing that got everybody. You need this to
buy or sell? This is the mark of the beast.
So that's how it started, and then it evolved pretty
quickly after that into just a straight up urban legend
and rumor that those those guidelines, the two in the beginning,
the two in the middle, and the two in the end,
actually or encoded sixes to which meant that every barcode

(49:39):
in the world or every UPC symbol in the world
had six six six embedded in it, which clearly made
it the mark of the beast, and poured um George
Lawyer or layer who invented this is like, no, I
swear I did not create the mark of the beast.
And apparently he got a registered letter once from Satan
himself say, how does it feel to have done my

(50:02):
my bidding? Sucker? I have six six six on the
license plate of my pickup truck, yes, by chance, which
I kind of thought was great. Sure, Yeah, you stole
my Jesus fish, didn't you. Uh. There was one other
thing that kind of helped the urban legend to chuck.
The IBM scanners that were first put into use were

(50:24):
models three six six six, what thirty sixty six? There
you have it, um. Last thing, Uh, there was one
thing I wanted to mention. We talked a little bit
about how um bar codes we basically couldn't exist without them.
There's five billion bar codes are scanned every day. That

(50:45):
g s one site tracks it um and basically says
about five billion today. Wow, all over the world. Five
billion UPC codes are bar codes of all kinds are
scanned every day. And then the last thing is there
is a company called Acquiring Monuments that builds headstones that
have QR codes engraved in them. I've heard about so

(51:07):
that you can scan it as you're in a cemetery,
you know, bring up like information and pictures of the
deceased and talk about their life. Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Instead of you're not limited by the size of your gravestone. No,
with just your name and like, you know, a couple
of sentences about your life, you could have like a
one inch by one inch grave stone. That's all you need.
That'd be kind of goal. It's the way with the future. Yeah. Well,

(51:29):
if you want to know more about bar codes, you
can go to a store and start studying them. Go
do that now. Oh wait, but first listen to this
listener mail. Uh this I've been meaning to read this
for a few weeks. We've gotta email from a woman
named Maggie who works for a great organization. UM, I'll

(51:50):
just read it. Hey, guys, listen to your Selects episode
recently about circumcision. Thank you for creating awareness about female
genital mutilation around the world. I work with an organ
station and Kenya that rescues young girls from early forced
marriage and female genital mutilation. Some of our girls have
been rescued from uh this as early as age eight. Uh.
We just recently rescued our one girl and have raised

(52:13):
up every single one of them to graduate high school,
which is a rare thing in this part of Kenya. Uh. Yeah,
it's very cool. Many have moved on to go on
to college. Tribe girls and Kenya are raised to feel
worthless and inferior to men and boys. Their only value
is a dowry they can provide their father when he
sells them for marriage. All of our girls have learned
their worth and value, which empowers them to spread their

(52:34):
message to other girls around them. Uh. They're wonderful girls
and so happy now. The two times I had visited
the last few years have been amazing, eye opening experiences.
It's good to see how quickly the girl's blossom with
some security, love and protection. Uh. They are remarkable women.
One girl sponsored is ten now, but was eight when
we rescued her. Uh and to think she was going

(52:55):
to be sold off as someone's wife at eight years old.
I'd love for you plug our websites. Your listeners can
get involved if they want to support it is uh
sarooney dot org s a ru n i dot org.
There's a gift tab at the top of the page,
as well as lots of information on what we do.
We specifically need funds to build more dorms and bathhouses

(53:16):
for the girls. We are maxed out on beds, cannot
take any more at the moment, so that is our
next big goal. I'm really glad you read this one man. Amazing.
That's for Maggie and again at is s a r
u n i dot org. Thanks a lot, Maggie. I'm
not just for writing in but for the work you're doing.
That's really amazing stuff. UM. If you want to get

(53:37):
in touch with us like Maggie did and let us
know about some amazing things you're doing, we love to
hear that stuff. So you can go on to our website,
a's stuff you Should Know dot com and check out
our social links there, or you can send us a
good old fastioned email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

(53:59):
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m
hm