Barcode

A barcode is a row of thick and thin vertical bars, often with 14 numbers, that can be read by a computer.

Barcodes appear on most supermarket products, on books, on library cards and many other items.

Barcodes are read by a 'barcode reader' which detects the patterns of light and dark and transmits the data to a computer.

One of the key advantages of a barcode system is that it does *not* contain price information. Prices change all the time, often every day as bargains come and go. What the barcode provides is the *location* of the record for that item within the stock database. So if a price changes, only the database record need change.

2020-10