How The Barcode Made Our Modern Economy - The Lightbulb Moment

[@unaeki]

honestly thought it was gonna start like “In 1949, a man named Joseph Barcode...”

[@RaymondStone]

The usual Cheddar style is, "the year is 1949..."

[@tommylundy2495]

Henry Barr-Koed

[@KangJangkrik]

@@tommylundy2495 lmao youtube thinks your comment is translatable

[@OriginalGrasshopper]

I wish this video would’ve explained how the barcode is actually read by the scanner, and why it went from circular in 1972 to square soon thereafter.

[@RodrigoroRex]

First question, light reflection. Like every camera it has sensors that capture the light reflected. But to make it simple, we just stuck to white and black (minimal chance of error since they're the opposite) White reflects light, black doesn't (as much of course). So the scanner receives the light, turns it into data and the computer interprets the data and kaboom.

[@Xanthelei]

For the second question, I would make an educated guess that having a longer square barcode allows for more digits to be encoded than a bullseye style one like the originals had. They went very quickly from "we'll have a few hundred, maybe a thousand items to slap these onto" to "holy crap, EVERYONE wants one!" So they would have had to look for the fastest and simplest change they could make while still having the basic programming work with it - add more lines, have more data. Then how to keep it in the same space - have it read like a sentence rather than duplicate the information by having it wrap around, so you can increase data density. This was all happening back around the time home PCs were just starting to take off, so mainframe programming was likely still an issue for corporations, and they'd want to reduce costs by limiting the work done on the programs they already had in place. Printing new stickers would be cheaper than having programmers spend hours rewriting code, after all.

[@alisonken1]

History of the barcode (smithsonian magazine www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-bar-code-180956704/

[@itwsntme]

Taking a wild guess here, I imagine the circular design would allow the laser to read the barcode regardless of orientation. Not sure why they settled on rectangular later, but if you look at any reading machine today, it has a multitude of lasers in a bunch of orientations so they can read the rectangular one. They probably couldn't afford all those lasers per machine back then

[@zacharyoliver5332]

I'm really enjoying this series !! It's so good

[@Carlos-qx8bp]

Ikr I’m like so interested lmao

[@Verilee1970]

I really like this series of videos, they remind me of the old Modern Marvels show on the History channel (of yesteryear).

[@ArtOfficialKreations]

Ahh, the good ol’ days of pre-pawnstars History channel

[@Freddie_Dunning-Kruger_Jr.]

Sometimes this channel piggybacks on trending videos and topics, I do enjoy their content about 50% of the time

I was expecting more info on how the scanner interprets the lines, how the numbers are encoded, what measures are in place to make sure the code is correctly scanned even when upside down, who assignes the codes to individual products, etc...

[@blacbillionaire]

Sounds like you know the deal already. A stick in the mud.

[@ShawnLH88]

Fun fact: barcodes scanners read the laser reflections of the white spaces between the black bars Black lines absorb light and can’t reflect the laser to be read back to the machine

[@Heavely-Mixes]

So informative thank you handsome man if you want my number plz reply

[@goodhuman4685]

@@Heavely-Mixes y3s

[@dougbrowning82]

So, the scanner alternately sees black and white, off and on, binary code. The fundamentals of digital data.

[@correctionguy7632]

thats just exactly what was said in the video...

[@allocater2]

2041: "In 2021 you had people manually rotate the item to find the bar code and then manually move it over the scanner. It was a nightmare. Now the chip automatically reports who takes it out of the store." 2061: "What are stores?"

[@Manbarrican]

Like... What if eventually we got so good at recycling that instead of making new products, we would materialize them from recycled resource 🤷🏾‍♀️ nobody would need to buy anything with their fabricators at home 🤣

[@AquaWeiner]

@@Manbarrican The rich would never let that happen. Search up something called Induced Obsolescence.

[@Wolfmaxy]

@@Manbarrican Ohh god, what about the food? Do we have to shit it out and recycle it to make chocolate cake?

[@Manbarrican]

@@Wolfmaxy we'd probably have vertical farms to control the climate necessary to grow the crops... That's considering how bad global warming will get with current figures.

[@Manbarrican]

@@AquaWeiner we have already been shown time and time again that the common person will adopt survival tactics that aren't provided by capitalist products. A good amount of the world will need to adopt efficient recycling and use it for themselves.

[@coolboss999]

This is so informative. Love this series keep it up!!! 😊

[@nathaniel_fern4207]

I knew a badass guy with a bar code tattoo on the back of his neck. Scary guy

[@bri1085]

Eas he bald, I think I might know him

[@jeiku5314]

Was he worth $7.99 when they scanned him?

[@baz1184]

Was it Jessica Alba?

[@TransitAndTeslas]

SCAN IT!

[@daisuke910]

Maybe a prison tag code... JK

[@hjackwingo]

I remember back in the day, 60’s, working at a grocery store stocking shelves. Each item was priced with an ink stamper. If prices changed, we had to use fingernail polish remover to remove and reprice. Compared to today’s standards, it was akin to hammer and chisel.

[@jamesdonaldson8688]

Unreal stuff! Loved the script and the pace of this one guys.

[@constancestrawn1303]

The grocery store memory that will stay with me forever is when our lasers went down the day before Thanksgiving. I had to key in the full SKU of every product by hand. Thank goodness when I worked at Sally Beauty Supply, we had 6-number skus. I eventually memorized several. My numpad skills are legendary lol

[@randybentley2633]

Back when I was a kid in the late '70s and early '80s I remember seeing those price gun labels on items in some stores and the barcoded ones in others and low and behold those that didn't jump onto the barcode bandwagon aren't around anymore.

[@jean-louistychon3340]

Cool video but I was expecting explaination on how it actually stores information and is read by the scanner

[@withamarshview1436]

I agree. This video had potential to be so much more, even in 11 minutes.

[@complainer406]

It's binary converted to white and black lines instead of ones and zeros The only info encoded in a standard barcode is a number. The number is an ID from a dataset which is where product info/pricing comes from.

[@cmyk8964]

The information stored is 10-ish decimal digits. They are encoded as varying widths of black and white stripes. Some stripes are alignment guides; you know which ones are alignment guides by seeing which stripes poke out the bottom into the numbers. The scanner shines a line of lasers at the barcode, which is reflected back into another lens in the scanner, which decodes these digits.

[@KayoMichiels]

Hey Cheddar, what about the standard shipping container? Ever since it's invention, it has drastically improved loading and unloading times.

[@cheddar]

Yes! We are actually considering that one. Thanks for the rec!

[@martinw.8572]

Oh boy, the one thing people know the ISO for - your classic TEU container. Would love to see that one.

[@KayoMichiels]

@@martinw.8572 It has been on my mind for a while since the port of Antwerp is not far from me and it's known for being among the largest when it comes to handling shipping containers.

[@michaelguerrieri3486]

@@cheddar do Saturday morning cartoons.

[@dougbrowning82]

And retired containers are now being repurposed as housing units.

[@1337w0n]

I like how the CEO is the protagonist of a story about someone else's achievements. It's a little microcosm of capitalism.

[@piyushvaidya5086]

Inventions are worthless untill they have no market. The capitalists/businessman create that market and demand, thereby bringing actual value to the world. People all over the world invent hundreds of things for the most menial of problems. No ones gives a shit. Even if Steve wozniak invented the Mac, apple wouldnt be shit without Steve jobs. You think NBA, NFL players are the ones who "actually play" and the managers just sit and make money? Well guess what, people have been basketing balls in courts and headbutting each other like madmen for the last 400 years. No one gave a shit. It's when the capitalists put up million of dollars and put the league together, risked their dollars and bet on these players, and created the market audience for it, that these sports "talents" earn millions.

[@1337w0n]

@@piyushvaidya5086 No, they don't. The advertisers do the thing that you're talking about, and sometimes you don't even need them.

[@brunodosreis]

@@piyushvaidya5086 Good point. However, the condescending tone towards inventors is completely unnecessary. It doesn’t make sense to praise great investors for risking their capital and then overlook great inventors for risking their lifespan on something that will eventually create immense value for generations. Your “basketing balls” analogy is terrible, because it only peaks the interest of investors/businessmen once they see the local icecream sales go up everytime there’s guys playing basketball at the playground: they “find” the market by means of analysis. They don’t typically create or develop the games that they sell or support.

[@ninja1inblack105]

@@1337w0n oh no he is right. Sit back and take some advice

[@piyushvaidya5086]

@@1337w0n advertising has its origins in the rising competitions across industries and the ease of business going up. Advertisers are required in this day and time, because capitalism has overtime brought heavy competition into multiple sectors due to its ability to trickle down wealth and create opportunities, while uplifting millions out of poverty and create a huge middle class. Advertising is not intrinsic to "building" a business, though arguably it is the pillar of "growing" a business in this day n age. Building a business requires Teambuilding, Process & standardization and investment. 1. Teambuilding - because markets of today are vastly complex than before industrialization, thus you need heavy specialization. Building a high skilled team for achieving such complex businesses, managing them, setting timelines, paygrades, SOPs for them, is a vastly complex job then basketing a ball in the court. NBA players never earned millions until Television & internet made reaching millions of people possible. 2. Process & standardization - The difference between you average ice cream seller on the corner, and Ben & Jerry's is that, your ice cream seller tries to offer 10 different things to the 100 locals, and continues modifying his schedule and delivery process for each customer over his lifetime. while Ben & Jerry's have over the years, established a whole complex end-to-end process & supply chain for how a single ice-cream will go from milk to the end product. after that over time, when the process is standardised, and each team member knows what part of the chain he should focus on, that is when ben & jerry's repeats the same process for each different flavour of icecream, it is modular, it is standardised, it is process-driven, and it is predictable. ofcourse, that requires money per se, but your average icecream seller will not even begin standardizing the 5 employees he has, so expecting that when you throw money at him, he will do that for say 50-100 employees is bullshit. Process-driven is an approach which is dependent on said individual, and it is perhaps the most valuable skill you can have while wanting to build a business, learning & trying to make the best ice-cream in the world, will get your business nowhere. 3. Investment - God bless the rich because they keep funding your average startups & businesses, instead of hoarding the wealth. their net worth's are not liquid cash, before you accuse them of hoarding.

[@bloqk16]

I'm impressed with this video having an industry spokesperson contributing to the production. Most impressively was seeing the closing credits in this video, which gave attributable reference info sources; the names of entities that provided the visual items used in the video; and the names of individuals involved with the video production. All of that gave this video a level of credibility that's lacking with many other KZbin posts.

[@H3erobrineNotch]

The next advancement of the barcode is rfid chips that identities themselves automatically , when they are near a terminal, so you don’t have to scan each barcode.

[@drakonn5024]

Nah not economically viable or logistically feesible. Also doesn't offer any real benefit. The reason that tech has existed for decades and we haven't seen it.

[@drakonn5024]

Don't get me wrong scanless tech is poping up but not from rfid

[@TransitAndTeslas]

@@drakonn5024 Ummm Walmart? Every shipping box is RFID tagged. They even mention it on the front door. They call it EPC

[@H3erobrineNotch]

@@drakonn5024 they're actually very cheap, as cheap as 10 cents. And they save alot of time and labor

[@danielfasey7648]

Actually there is a store in Europe that use them on all there products. It’s called Decathlon it’s a sports shop you drop your products in a tray and it tally’s your bill instantly.

[@bloqk16]

I recall the era of retailing prior to barcodes: When I worked in music records/tapes retailing in the 1970s: the hand-held machine that applied price-stickers on merchandize were expensive, costing about $25 each; or $130 in 2021 dollars. Those mechanisms had to be built strong for the use they got. When the bar-coding was used to compile sales numbers for music records/tapes, it finally gave accurate sales count figures; as prior to that, records/tapes retailers could inflate sales numbers of units when reporting to radio stations/trade publications. The record labels/distributors would show their appreciation to retailers in-kind for those favorable (i.e. inflated) sales reports. A successful grocer in the Fresno, California, region gave a group tour of his supermarket in 1976, where he told the group he was holding off from going to bar-coding since each Point-of-Sale checkout register unit would cost (US) $12K each; or equal to $56K in 2021 dollars. So, consider the cost when replacing the six manual cash register checkouts with six bar-code PoS registers.

[@TheJoacojoaco]

I’m amazed at how many things started as a doodle on Miami Beach according to Cheddar 😱😂

[@waycoolscootaloo]

I remember back in the 1980s not every store had yet switched over to barcode. Mainly small mom-and-pop locations. So I'm just old enough to remember seeing physical price tags on all of the stores items that were printed out by some price tag label maker. And at the big box stores, you would sometimes find a bar code along with a physical price tag, as this was still the tail end of the transition time. But by the early 90's big box stores no longer hand-printed labels. And most mom and pop shops spent the cash to get the full bar code system in place as well. And by the time the internet really got going in 1995, the US a least, was 100% all barcode at that point.

[@demon108hunter6]

Fun fact: the scanner only scan the white part of the barcode

[@Theinatoriinator]

yep, and its finding the distance between the bars relative to the other distances. They are actually really interesting.

[@andrewgutmann9432]

Scanner sounds racist (Sarcasm)

[@waltermanson999]

Amazing story and video ! Thank you for sharing !

[@michaeljf6472]

It's great when today you don't even need to stop at a cashier, just scan products yourself as you're putting them in the cart

[@mopododo]

No. Today we cqn just let under payed amazon employees in pee bottle fulfillment centers scan the bar codes as we lay in bed and do nothing.

[@DM-en7hk]

Misleading image but very good information. Cheddar does it again.

[@Insuranceexamprep]

This video has truly saved my life !

[@soufbayshawty]

We do realize how often barcodes are used, we are the warehouse workers, we are the pharmacists, we are the grocery store cashiers. We do the labor. I scan hundreds and hundreds of customers in a part time shift.

[@Jvnet10]

Barcode walked so QR Code could run btw I miss Jacob

[@Jacob-nr9dn]

I'm here

[@RavalSuraj]

I clicked on this hoping the university I went to (Drexel) would be mentioned :D Go Dragons!

[@glutenfreejoe6099]

Excellent video very informative, Thanks

[@tenow]

9:07 hexagon is the bestagon

[@bjwrlddre2243]

I love cheddar, you guys are awesome!!!!

[@chadjones1266]

Thanks again

[@mdhazeldine]

Good video but you glossed over how they work and what about those bullseye codes? I never knew about those. How did we get from the bullseye to the straight bars? That would have been genuinely interesting to include in the video

[@SharonCarbine]

The pace of this video started off much too slowly. However, the topic is important. So, I forced myself to listen to the whole thing. Learned a lot!

[@skygodofallurya]

Id watch these if a 10 minute video didnt have five unskippable ads in it. Jesus

[@cmyk8964]

How could you not mention the barcode check digit? They’re so cool and clever.

[@FinancialShinanigan]

If they could, governments and companies would barcode people

[@potto1488]

You mean your SSN?

[@elysian2765]

Technically your social security number is an identification number, it simply isn't scanned because it would have no practical purpose. Plus phones already kind of do that

[@slarson8044]

This is an interesting topic. I enjoy your videos very much.

[@BVH-tje]

Any other Dutchies expecting Albert Heijn to show up in this video, only to be disappointed?

[@theMoporter]

"Woodland had a great mind. He worked on the Manhattan Project-" Yeah "great mind" is not my first thought when I hear that

[@kinfongyeung5400]

here is the thing, at the time they didn't know about radiation poisoning or how the bomb is gonna be used. So the fact that he worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the world-first nuclear bomb is by all accounts a great mind.

[@bcubed72]

Can't exactly be a dumbass and do THAT, now can you? "Great" can also be a modifier meaning "really big," not just "really good." After all, it wasn't "Alexander the Really Good Guy," now was it?

[@doug.mitchell.106ID]

Having worked in the "AUTO ID" industry during the boom years of the late 80's and early 90's, specifically with barcoding applications, some of the generalizations made in the name of keeping the narrative "simple" had the unfortunate side effect of increasing inaccuracy a great deal. UPC is one of *dozens* of "1D" coding formats. By virtue of being one of the first formats AND it's presence in the grocery industry, it's the most visible and public-facing -- but is largely unsuitable and rarely used outside of that admittedly large niche. Nearly all of the other coding formats are ALPHA-numeric and their uses run the gamut of industry and automation.

[@yourfellowsimmer5368]

Last time I was this early this joke was still funny

[@billbill3078]

got to love how if you want your product in stores, like walmart, you are FORCED to buy bar codes from gs1.

[@mischadee]

And isn’t it great that you can sell that very same product in almost every store on the planet since it’s a gs1 standard? Would have ben more costly if Walmart and Costco used different barcodes right😉?

[@Qupear]

Often barcodes doesn't work as expected. And not forget that all of this ended up that you don't need barcodes. You just put items in your cart and it's automatically recognized and is added to your total. Then you just go through payment gate and some amount of money is automatically sent from your bank account.

[@ThomasWSmith-wm5xn]

I'm excited about the BR code

[@savoirfaire5460]

I remember bar codes on items before we had scanners

[@tickogrey5846]

great content as always!

[@t_2756]

You forgot to mention that 2D aka "QR code" was invented by a Japanese auto mobile parts company Denso.

[@first6969]

Quality Content...

[@oleurgast730]

Actually the timeline seems a bit silly about two dimentional bar-code. They started success 1992 with the movie "Batmans Return" wich was the first movie using the two dimentional barcode to encode the complete audio of the movie. With 4 barcodes per picture and 24 pictures per second you have more than 600.000 Barcodes on one normal movie. So in the late 90s, already more 2d barcodes where scanned than 1d ones... So 2d barcode with more detailed information is not something new, but more than a quarter of a century old. It has only become more visible to the public in recent years - before it was only hearable to public, not been recogniced as a 2d barcode for the normal people.

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

Next tech: RFID. Especially printed RFID. Vastly greater capacity and way easier to read.

[@tb9734]

I recognize this voice. Is this Really Graceful narrating?

[@Xanthelei]

The new question about barcodes: when will companies like Apple and Razer stop making them so damn tiny most scanners take five or six passes to register they even exist? Seriously, if it's smaller than my thumbnail, it's too small. Especially when the people actually scanning them are judged based on how many they can process per hour.

[@wordsmith451]

Now let’s see a follow up showing how a large enough standard QR code can technically store a game.

[@tim.a.k.mertens]

production value >>>

[@IKEMENOsakaman]

Wowww, I didn't know that barcodes meant so much. Do you think next will be QR code for cashless payment?

[@kevinaero5586]

For sure, restaurants are already applying it.

[@elysian2765]

The problem with cashless payment is the lack of accessibility for everyone. Not everyone has a bank account or technology that allows them to pay cashless. This would end up discriminating against lower class and homeless people in the long run. Technological progress has to follow social progress

[@gxrgaming6476]

All I want to know is how did they get footage in Walmart

[@serpentious]

Hey Cheddar recently The Lightbulb moment episodes have vanished from my CurosityStream, do you know anything about this?

[@LauraHernandez-qn7lk]

Countries with a lot of inflation dont use this because prices constantly change

[@CuppaLiber-tea]

Huh I got a midroll ad for a barcode licenser

[@KusumaWijaya]

Thank for Joseph jotland

[@oscaralejandrotorresaguila5886]

Cant wait for a 3D code

[@ahsansajid9814]

Where would the world be without American inventors??

[@Ascertivus]

The photo at 6:18 looks kind of like a liminal space image to me.

[@oopsy444]

Surprised they didn't mention how each line is info. 1st few lines are country and company then product. Google it. Its super interesting ersting

[@Parasaurolophus476]

I want to know who the first person to make the, "it won't scan, it must be free" joke. I bet it was day two of the scanner's use.

[@AMEENHAI]

you omitted the earlier (KARTRAK) color bar coded system used in American train coach tracking

[@prashanttripathi3208]

Grape

[@mirzaahmed6589]

I'm waiting for 3D barcodes.

[@ToThePowerOfFour]

IF THAT MAN WHO DECIDED TO INVEST INTO MIAMI BEACH (previous lightbulb moment video) DIDN'T DO SO, WE WOULDN'T HAVE BARCODES.

[@blacbillionaire]

A bar. A code. Bar code. Nice.

[@graham1034]

Should have included at least a little about the extensive use of QR codes in the Chinese (and the rest of East Asian to a lesser degree) consumer space. They've basically taken over everything.

[@furkan2640]

I wonder how products don't have duplicate barcode. Like how companies guarantee my toilet paper doesn't have the same barcode as my ice cream

[@omarsayyed4407]

That company that the lady who was guest speaking is in charge of assigning upcs

[@Hauketal]

A hierarcical method of assignment. First a prefix selects a regional organisation, then some digits select a manufacturer in that region, finally some digits to designate a specific product and a check digit. Her I have a bottle with 5000112576009 where 500 is one of the prefixes for the UK, 0112 is for the Coca Cola bottling company there, 57600 is a bottle of Coke Zero with 1.25 liters labeled for the German market and 9 to catch transmission errors.

[@MrSun0007]

The store can put a new label on it which a different barcode

[@ryanclark692]

His first name was Norman

[@Manbarrican]

The laser equipment is digging through an already limited supply of Helium too, btw

[@envisionelectronics]

Laser diodes don’t use helium.

[@olivergriffiths1996]

With really good computer vision AI maybe we won’t need any codes at all. Like google lens

[@organizedchaos4559]

So the next thing is 3d barcodes? Holograms?

[@Kas_Styles]

Interesting

[@drjny]

I'm looking forward to 3d barcodes.

[@juanvaldivia8001]

3D barcode when?

[@Paulkjoss]

What did the guy on the beach have to do with anything again?

[@Ok-fj4mv]

Not first not last but gay

[@adrianb5028]

Just go to any bodaga you can still get the 1950s experience cash only and prices stamps on food.

[@davidrubio.24]

What was the China story about?

[@michealwestfall8544]

To think, they could have used punched cards as barcodes instead of programming computers.

[@dougbrowning82]

Punched cards were originally invented for census taking, before computers ever existed. They were also used for years for voting. The machines that read them were called tabulators.

[@Green4CloveR]

Today, our faces are barcodes

[@HH-le1vi]

Only if we have lines in our foreheads

[@OghamTheBold]

To get one barcode Amazon forces poor folks in to a lifelong barcode rental debt

[@ralphcanero3995]

What would had happened if he never went to the beach & just stayed home?? .....

[@zaynkhan9147]

How’s thinking adout 3D Qr cods

[@sarahburns600]

It's seeming like these early influential people always drew their first ideas in the sand...

[@mopododo]

Is this a video from 2005?

[@Joe0400]

Got a gs1 ad. Lol

[@robdawg1017]

6:13 What the hell is pooch liver?

[@elizabethdavis1696]

Dog treats

[@jonny777bike]

It has done a lot of good but now we need a way to measure the history of a product and some kind of serial number. With food we need a way to scan sell by date. With groceries stores there’s a better chance of catching that date. With Amazon there is no good system and they treat the workers like slaves. Also we don’t know the history of the sellers food products on Amazon. Some Amazon sellers could potentially sell expired food and would be hard to check that. Also with Amazon reviews those could be sketchy as well.

[@christopheb9221]

cant wait until rfid aand can just put stuff in the cart and it will be recorded along with cabinets and fridge that knows what you have. you could even ask siri/alexa/google "do i have any chips or could have auto buy stuff when low. or out. not sure how you could do it with things like milk where youd have only bottle and order when low.

[@rockfish2104]

One day it will ALL will collapse/ or take over our lives???

[@bluujo9328]

Reall good created video but i didn't need to listen to a few seconds of how it affected china. The fact that I've never realized how much thought has been put in bar/qr codes.

[@BaconAstronaut]

Hello :)

[@ytvideo6963]

This is lazy writing made to sound like a deep dive. First they say that barcodes fueled a revolution. Then they say that the 2d barcodes as part of that revolution only used numbers. The bars in a product upc are numeric but in logistics and other uses there are other types of barcodes (code 39, code 128, etc) that do contain letters. Also every part of the origin story seems apocryphal or at the very least wildly glaced over. So he was putting dots in the sand and then we got the barcode. No mention of how those morsecode dots became lines.