Barcodes, the ubiquitous black-and-white stripes on products, are a sophisticated system powering modern commerce, designed to make product information retrieval swift and accurate. Invented in 1948 by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, their design evolved from Morse code, using contrasting patterns to represent digital information.

• Barcodes convert visual patterns into a sequence of binary ones and zeros, which computers interpret.
• The first digit identifies the product type, the next five digits represent the manufacturer code, followed by five digits for the product code, and a final check digit for verification.
• A standard barcode contains ninety-five evenly spaced columns of data, read in milliseconds by scanners, enhancing the efficiency of checkout and inventory systems.