BAR-CODE

noun and verb Also written barcode or bar code (Business World) (Science and Technology) noun: A machine-readable code consisting of a series of lines (bars) and spaces of varying width, used for stock control on goods for sale, library books, etc. transitive verb: To label (goods, etc.) with a bar-code. Etymology: Formed by compounding: a code based on the width of bars. History and Usage: The bar-code was invented as long ago as the early sixties and was quite widely used by public libraries for their book-issuing systems by the mid seventies. The code has to be 'read', and in the early days this was usually done using a light pen. With the introduction of computerized tills and EPOS during the eighties, bar-codes became seemingly ubiquitous on goods of all kinds, and a variety of types of bar-code reader could be seen (and heard bleeping) at the tills. By the early nineties the bar-code had been put to more inventive uses still: television-programme magazines published them on their pages so that videos could be programmed direct from the code, and scientists used them to label the subjects of their experiments (in one case, bar-codes were stuck to the hairs on the backs of hundreds of bees). The adjective used to describe goods which carry a bar-code is bar-coded; the practice of providing goods with them is bar-coding. Bar-code reader...comes with a sheet of bar codes...You set the timer by running the reader over the appropriate bar codes for day, time and channel required. Which? Sept. 1989, p. 450 The electronic supermarket check-out, which bleeped and flashed up the cost of items taken from the bar codes on the packets, also warranted some attention. Good Food Jan./Feb. 1990, p. 26