How do barcodes work

1. How do barcodes work?

2. Whether it is about shopping or running a factory, barcodes have simplified operations both for manufacturers and consumers. Things have become a lot easier for both parties at the operational level use of barcodes.

3. From books to cereal packets and other items, you may have seen the black and white stripes called barcodes on the surface of several items. As a result, you might wonder how they accomplish the task for which they are intended.

4. Barcode labels manufacturers, such as Holoflex, use barcodes to lend a helping hand to their clients in reading product-related information. As an efficient means for this purpose, it enables companies to interpret and verify large chunks of data or information of goods within a shorter notice. In general, it performs this task in a matter of just a few minutes. Performing the same task by manual effort would take several hours or even days.

5. As far as the working phenomenon of barcodes is concerned, it happens according to the principle of physics. It begins with an incandescent light bulb, the light of which not only shines on the barcode pattern but also the surface of the paper. Thereafter, it enters into the sensitive light detector. Usually, companies use a light detector that is super sensitive to capture precise reading. This is precisely where the black and white stripes that you see on a barcode comes to the fore. Black stripes absorb light, whereas the white ones shine upon the detection of light. Unlike the barcodes that were in use in the past, modern-day barcodes are one-dimensional.

6. When the laser runs through the surface of the paper with the barcode pattern, some part of it is absorbed. The remaining part, which is not absorbed, shines, and eventually gets reflected. It happens due to the difference in the responses of the black and white stripes to laser light. Thereafter, the scanner evaluates the amount of reflected light. After interpretation, it converts the reflected light into digits. It uses this number-based data to retrieve the necessary information from a specific database.

7. Now you might wonder why a barcode only consists of black and white stripes and not stripes of any other color. The reason for it lies in the binary number system. A computer device processes information in the form of binary digits that primarily consists of two digits: 0 and 1. While one of the stripes signify the former, the other one implies the latter.

8. For more details visit: Barcode labels manufacturers Holoflex Limited