Everyone has seen a barcode on a product they have purchased. They are a set of thick and thin black parallel lines with a set of numbers beneath them.
Barcodes are used as a way of attaching some form of data to an item without the need for the information to be printed on the item. The barcode’s lines are read by an optical machine and this information can be referenced against a database which contains information about that particular item. When they were first introduced barcodes were just a set of parallel lines, they are now however available in a range of formats made up of dots, hexagons and even rectangles.
A barcode’s use was initially restricted to product packaging. However today their use has spread to many other spheres and they are one of the most common ways of identifying stock or items within a consumer field.
Because barcodes have advanced so much you might find that there are many different ways of printing barcodes and many types of barcode products on the open market. The price of barcode equipment and the quality of the barcode labels you can purchase does then vary. However, even cheap barcode labels perform their primary function, which is to provide a unique identification code for a product or item.