Unsung Heroes
Barcode
Sometimes it’s good to be overlooked. The combination of a few lines and gaps that make up a barcode can find their place on just about any product and play a useful role whenever information needs to be conveyed fast and error-free. The barcode was inspired by Morse code, in which short and long signals are used to represent different letters. It burst onto the scene in everyday life in 1974, when a packet of chewing gum was scanned at the register in a supermarket in Ohio, USA. Barcodes have literally left their mark on more than a billion products in circulation around the world, and those lines and gaps are decrypted around ten billion times every day.
A barcode doesn’t mean much to the human eye. It can discern that the vertical black bars are of different thicknesses, but that’s about it. Machines, by contrast, can read a barcode in an instant and translate it into unique product numbers. And that ability plays an essential role in transhipments at Gebrüder Weiss: each scan reveals the contents of a shipment, where it is heading and how it will be carried. It’s genuinely difficult to imagine modern logistics without barcodes.
Now, though, classical barcodes are sharing the stage with two-dimensional QR or Data Matrix codes. These can store more information and be deployed more flexibly. But they still follow the same principle that has served barcodes so well: translating information into an optical pattern.
The world is full of things that perform their prescribed roles with serene reliability. They control traffic, make sending packages easy, and ensure that processes can be planned securely and do not grind to a halt. We have come to rely on such things to the point where we now afford them little further thought. Indeed, our attention tends to be drawn instead to things that are not working so well.
Which is a shame, as, if we zoom in a little, there is much to discover in the small details of unsung heroes like roundabouts, barcodes, checklists, and breathing exercises. All are rooted in a core focus on people and their needs. Understanding why something works can sharpen our awareness of how our day-to-day life can be made easier or more stress-free.
In ATLAS #25, we’re inviting you to view things differently, to look more closely at apparently unremarkable staples of life that help us in pretty remarkable ways.
