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126-472: A Data Matrix is a two-dimensional code consisting of black and white "cells" or dots arranged in either a square or rectangular pattern, also known as a matrix . The information to be encoded can be text or numeric data. Usual data size is from a few bytes up to 1556 bytes . The length of the encoded data depends on the number of cells in the matrix. Error correction codes are often used to increase reliability: even if one or more cells are damaged so it
252-536: A barcode reader which allows the media to be tracked, for example when a parcel has been dispatched to the recipient. For industrial engineering purposes, Data Matrix codes can be marked directly onto components, ensuring that only the intended component is identified with the data-matrix-encoded data. The codes can be marked onto components with various methods, but within the aerospace industry these are commonly industrial ink-jet, dot-peen marking, laser marking, and electrolytic chemical etching (ECE). These methods give
378-489: A 1976 article. Sims Supermarkets were the first location in Australia to use barcodes, starting in 1979. A barcode system is a network of hardware and software, consisting primarily of mobile computers , printers , handheld scanners , infrastructure, and supporting software. Barcode systems are used to automate data collection where hand recording is neither timely nor cost effective. Despite often being provided by
504-424: A 500-watt incandescent light bulb shining through the paper onto an RCA935 photomultiplier tube (from a movie projector) on the far side. He later decided that the system would work better if it were printed as a circle instead of a line, allowing it to be scanned in any direction. On 20 October 1949 Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for "Classifying Apparatus and Method", in which they described both
630-519: A crop circle are now well documented on the Internet . Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising. Many crop circles show human symbols, like the heart and arrow symbol of love, and stereotyped alien faces. Hoaxers have been caught in the process of making new circles, such as in 2004 in the Netherlands It has been suggested that crop circles may be
756-522: A crop circle. Takács and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture , created a 36 m (118 ft) diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Székesfehérvár , 69 km (43 mi) southwest of Budapest , on 8 June 1992. In September, the pair appeared on Hungarian TV and exposed the circle as a hoax, showing photos of the field before and after
882-609: A different set for the next character. The only difference is that they reverse upper-and lower-case letters. C40 is primarily upper-case, with lower-case letters in set 3; Text is the other way around. Set 1, containing ASCII control codes, and set 2, containing punctuation symbols are identical in C40 and Text mode. EDIFACT mode uses six bits per character, with four characters packed into three bytes. It can store digits, upper-case letters, and many punctuation marks, but has no support for lower-case letters. Base 256 mode data starts with
1008-454: A distance, circular spots (...) they all presented much the same character, viz, a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle round the centre, and outside there a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered". In 1932, archaeologist E. C. Curwen observed four dark rings in a field at Stoughton Down near Chichester, but could examine only one: "a circle in which
1134-437: A few different forms. Matrix codes can also be read by a digital camera connected to a microcomputer running software that takes a photographic image of the barcode and analyzes the image to deconstruct and decode the code. A mobile device with a built-in camera, such as a smartphone , can function as the latter type of barcode reader using specialized application software and is suitable for both 1D and 2D codes. The barcode
1260-504: A field in Duhamel, Alberta , Canada; Department of National Defence investigators concluded that it was artificial but couldn't say who made them or how. The most famous case is the 1966 Tully "saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 9 or 12 m (30 or 40 ft) from a swamp and then fly away. On investigating he found a nearly circular area 10 m (32 ft) long by 8 m (25 ft) wide where
1386-560: A friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network. In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , Carl Sagan concludes that crop circles were created by Bower and Chorley and their copycats, and speculates that UFOlogists willingly ignore the evidence for hoaxing so they can keep believing in an extraterrestrial origin of
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#17327838694301512-409: A grid pattern. 2D symbologies also come in circular and other patterns and may employ steganography , hiding modules within an image (for example, DataGlyphs ). Linear symbologies are optimized for laser scanners, which sweep a light beam across the barcode in a straight line, reading a slice of the barcode light-dark patterns. Scanning at an angle makes the modules appear wider, but does not change
1638-503: A grocery store. This speeds up processing at check-outs and helps track items and also reduces instances of shoplifting involving price tag swapping, although shoplifters can now print their own barcodes. Barcodes that encode a book's ISBN are also widely pre-printed on books, journals and other printed materials. In addition, retail chain membership cards use barcodes to identify customers, allowing for customized marketing and greater understanding of individual consumer shopping patterns. At
1764-665: A journalist that the "saucer" was probably debris lifted by a willy-willy. After the 1960s, there was a surge of UFOlogists in Wiltshire , and there were rumours of "saucer nests" appearing in the area, but they were never photographed. There are other pre-1970s reports of circular formations, especially in Australia and Canada, but they were always simple circles, which could have been caused by whirlwinds. British pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley reported they started creating crop circles in British cornfields in 1978, inspired by
1890-434: A laser, as there is typically no sweep pattern that can encompass the entire symbol. They must be scanned by an image-based scanner employing a CCD or other digital camera sensor technology. The earliest, and still the cheapest, barcode scanners are built from a fixed light and a single photosensor that is manually moved across the barcode. Barcode scanners can be classified into three categories based on their connection to
2016-495: A length indicator, followed by a number of data bytes. A length of 1 to 249 is encoded as a single byte, and longer lengths are stored as two bytes. It is desirable to avoid long strings of zeros in the coded message, because they become large blank areas in the Data Matrix symbol, which may cause a scanner to lose synchronization. (The default ASCII encoding does not use zero for this reason.) In order to make that less likely,
2142-591: A linear code, like the one being developed by Woodland at IBM, was printed in the direction of the stripes, so extra ink would simply make the code "taller" while remaining readable. So on 3 April 1973 the IBM UPC was selected as the NAFC standard. IBM had designed five versions of UPC symbology for future industry requirements: UPC A, B, C, D, and E. NCR installed a testbed system at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio , near
2268-500: A meteorologist and physicist, proposed that the circles were caused by whirlwinds whose course was affected by southern England hills. As circles became more complex, Terence had to create increasingly complex theories, blaming an electromagneto-hydrodynamic "plasma vortex". The meteorological theory became popular, and it was even referenced in 1991 by physicist Stephen Hawking who said that, "Corn circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air". The weather theory suffered
2394-512: A mirror as well, making it capable of locating a barcode up to a meter (3 feet) in front of the scanner. This made the entire process much simpler and more reliable, and typically enabled these devices to deal with damaged labels, as well, by recognizing and reading the intact portions. Computer Identics Corporation installed one of its first two scanning systems in the spring of 1969 at a General Motors (Buick) factory in Flint, Michigan. The system
2520-534: A monthly pass. Then the US Post Office requested a system to track trucks entering and leaving their facilities. These applications required special retroreflector labels. Finally, Kal Kan asked the Sylvania team for a simpler (and cheaper) version which they could put on cases of pet food for inventory control. In 1967, with the railway system maturing, Collins went to management looking for funding for
2646-546: A new facility in Research Triangle Park to lead development. In July 1972 RCA began an 18-month test in a Kroger store in Cincinnati. Barcodes were printed on small pieces of adhesive paper, and attached by hand by store employees when they were adding price tags. The code proved to have a serious problem; the printers would sometimes smear ink, rendering the code unreadable in most orientations. However,
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#17327838694302772-558: A number of purposes, such as movement tracking or inventory stock checks. Data Matrix codes, along with other open-source codes such as 1D barcodes can also be read with mobile phones by downloading code specific mobile applications. Although many mobile devices are able to read 2D codes including Data Matrix Code, few extend the decoding to enable mobile access and interaction, whereupon the codes can be used securely and across media; for example, in track and trace, anti-counterfeit, e.govt, and banking solutions. Data Matrix codes are used in
2898-440: A permanent mark which can last up to the lifetime of the component. Data Matrix codes are usually verified using specialist camera equipment and software. This verification ensures the code conforms to the relevant standards, and ensures readability for the lifetime of the component. After component enters service, the Data Matrix code can then be read by a reader camera, which decodes the Data Matrix data which can then be used for
3024-694: A plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in straight lines. To prove their case they made a circle in front of journalists; a "cereologist" (advocate of paranormal explanations of crop circles), Pat Delgado, examined the circle and declared it authentic before it was revealed that it was a hoax. Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts from 1966, Bower and Chorley claimed to be responsible for all circles made prior to 1987, and for more than 200 crop circles in 1978–1991 (with 1,000 other circles not being made by them). Writing in Physics World , Richard Taylor of
3150-514: A project to develop a black-and-white version of the code for other industries. They declined, saying that the railway project was large enough, and they saw no need to branch out so quickly. Collins then quit Sylvania and formed the Computer Identics Corporation . As its first innovations, Computer Identics moved from using incandescent light bulbs in its systems, replacing them with helium–neon lasers , and incorporated
3276-609: A relation to ley lines . Some paranormal advocates think that crop circles are caused by ball lightning and that the patterns are so complex that they have to be controlled by some entity. Some proposed entities are: Gaia asking to stop global warming and human pollution ; God ; supernatural beings (for example Indian devas ); the collective minds of humanity through a proposed "quantum field"; and extraterrestrial beings. Responding to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing,
3402-500: A serious blow in 1991, but Hawking's point about hoaxes was supported when Bower and Chorley stated that they had been responsible for making all those circles. By the end of 1991 Meaden conceded that those circles that had complex designs were made by hoaxers. In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies , which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of
3528-448: A task for which they have become almost universal. The Uniform Grocery Product Code Council had chosen, in 1973, the barcode design developed by George Laurer . Laurer's barcode, with vertical bars, printed better than the circular barcode developed by Woodland and Silver. Their use has spread to many other tasks that are generically referred to as automatic identification and data capture (AIDC). The first successful system using barcodes
3654-459: A telescopic device and two stepladders. According to Rupert Sheldrake, the competition was organised by him and John Michell and "co-sponsored by The Guardian and The Cerealogist". The prize money came from PM , a German magazine. Sheldrake wrote that "The experiment was conclusive. Humans could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that followed
3780-442: A web page. A mobile device with a built-in camera might be used to read the pattern and browse the linked website, which can help a shopper find the best price for an item in the vicinity. Since 2005, airlines use an IATA-standard 2D barcode on boarding passes ( Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) ), and since 2008 2D barcodes sent to mobile phones enable electronic boarding passes. Some applications for barcodes have fallen out of use. In
3906-459: Is x 8 + x 5 + x 3 + x 2 + 1 {\displaystyle x^{8}+x^{5}+x^{3}+x^{2}+1} , corresponding to the polynomial number 301, with initial root = 1. The Reed–Solomon code uses one of 37 different polynomials over F 256 {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{256}} , with degrees ranging from 7 to 68, depending on how many error correction bytes
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4032-612: Is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form . Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D), can be scanned by special optical scanners , called barcode readers , of which there are several types. Later, two-dimensional (2D) variants were developed, using rectangles, dots, hexagons and other patterns, called 2D barcodes or matrix codes , although they do not use bars as such. Both can be read using purpose-built 2D optical scanners, which exist in
4158-505: Is absent, many are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters, and others can be adequately explained as such. There have been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud, like Bower and Chorley and tabloid Today hoaxing Pat Delgado, the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4 's Equinox hoaxing Terence Meaden, or
4284-461: Is an issue, but all color variations need to be tested before production to ensure they are readable. In May 2006 a German computer programmer, Bernd Hopfengärtner, created a large Data Matrix in a wheat field (in a fashion similar to crop circles ). The message read " Hello, World! ". In June 2011 the Parisian tattoo artist K.A.R.L., as part of a promotion for Ballantine's scotch whisky, created
4410-495: Is both invalid and unenforceable due to inequitable conduct by the defendants during the procurement of the patent. While the ruling was delivered after the patent expired, it precluded claims for infringement based on use of Data Matrix prior to November 2007. A German patent application DE 4107020 was filed in 1991, and published in 1992. This patent is not cited in the above US patent applications and might invalidate them. Two-dimensional code A barcode or bar code
4536-584: Is by far the most likely explanation for the circles. Patterns similar to crop circles can also be made in snow, by using skis, snow shoes or just walking with ordinary shoes. Patterns similar to crop circles can also be made in sand. Images can be made in forests by cutting trees, especially in areas with snow. Celebrating the Olympic Games in Lillehammer , Norway in 1994, a 360 m (390 yd) tall stylised image of an Olympic torch runner
4662-425: Is common for producers and users of bar codes to have a quality management system which includes verification and validation of bar codes. Barcode verification examines scanability and the quality of the barcode in comparison to industry standards and specifications. Barcode verifiers are primarily used by businesses that print and use barcodes. Any trading partner in the supply chain can test barcode quality. It
4788-632: Is considered to be pseudoscience, while at the time it was subject of serious research. At that time, it was also more likely that an unknown factor was behind the incidents, not least seen in light of the fact that GPS was not available to the public. Since becoming the focus of widespread media attention in the 1980s, crop circles have been the subject of speculation by various paranormal , ufological , and anomalistic investigators, ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from extraterrestrial beings . There has also been speculation that crop circles have
4914-432: Is delimited by a finder pattern, and this is surrounded on all four sides by a quiet zone border (margin). (Note: The modules may be round or square- no specific shape is defined in the standard. For example, dot-peened cells are generally round.) ECC 200, the newer version of Data Matrix, uses Reed–Solomon codes for error and erasure recovery. ECC 200 allows the routine reconstruction of the entire encoded data string when
5040-450: Is encoded using black bars of varying width. The second character is then encoded by varying the width of the white spaces between these bars. Thus, characters are encoded in pairs over the same section of the barcode. Interleaved 2 of 5 is an example of this. Stacked symbologies repeat a given linear symbology vertically. The most common among the many 2D symbologies are matrix codes, which feature square or dot-shaped modules arranged on
5166-462: Is important to verify a barcode to ensure that any reader in the supply chain can successfully interpret a barcode with a low error rate. Retailers levy large penalties for non-compliant barcodes. These chargebacks can reduce a manufacturer's revenue by 2% to 10%. A barcode verifier works the way a reader does, but instead of simply decoding a barcode, a verifier performs a series of tests. For linear barcodes these tests are: 2D matrix symbols look at
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5292-495: Is no scientific evidence for such explanations, and all crop circles are consistent with human causation. In 1991, two hoaxers, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, took credit for having created over 200 crop circles throughout England, in widely-reported interviews. The number of reports of crop circles increased substantially after interviews with them. In the United Kingdom, reported circles are not distributed randomly across
5418-550: Is scalable; commercial applications exist with images as small as 300 micrometres (0.012 in) (laser etched on a 600-micrometre (0.024 in) silicon device) and as large as a 1 metre (3 ft) square (painted on the roof of a boxcar ). Fidelity of the marking and reading systems are the only limitation. The US Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) recommends using Data Matrix for labeling small electronic components. Data Matrix codes are becoming common on printed media such as labels and letters. The code can be read quickly by
5544-433: Is that they are constructed by human beings as hoaxes, advertising , or art . The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. It is also possible to bend grass without breaking it, if it has recently rained—a method that was used to create crop circles in Hungary in 1992. Skeptics of
5670-424: Is unique. Symbol sizes vary from 10×10 to 144×144 in the new version ECC 200, and from 9×9 to 49×49 in the old version ECC 000 – 140. The most popular application for Data Matrix is marking small items, due to the code's ability to encode fifty characters in a symbol that is readable at 2 or 3 mm (0.003 or 0.005 sq in) and the fact that the code can be read with only a 20% contrast ratio. A Data Matrix
5796-419: Is unreadable, the message can still be read. A Data Matrix symbol can store up to 2,335 alphanumeric characters. Data Matrix symbols are rectangular, usually square in shape and composed of square "cells" which represent bits . Depending on the coding used, a "light" cell represents a 0 and a "dark" cell is a 1, or vice versa. Every Data Matrix is composed of two solid adjacent borders in an "L" shape (called
5922-460: The Association of American Railroads (AAR) selected it as a standard, automatic car identification , across the entire North American fleet. The installations began on 10 October 1967. However, the economic downturn and rash of bankruptcies in the industry in the early 1970s greatly slowed the rollout, and it was not until 1974 that 95% of the fleet was labeled. To add to its woes, the system
6048-546: The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry . No credible evidence of extraterrestrial origin has been presented. A small number of scientists (physicist Eltjo Haselhoff, the late biophysicist William Levengood) have claimed to observe differences between the crops inside the circles and outside them, citing this as evidence they were not man made. Levengood published papers in journal Physiologia Plantarum in 1994 and 1999. In his 1994 paper he found that certain deformities in
6174-515: The University of Oregon said that "the pictographs they created inspired a second wave of crop artists. Far from fizzling out, crop circles have evolved into an international phenomenon, with hundreds of sophisticated pictographs now appearing annually around the globe." After reports of simple circles in the 1970s, increasingly complex geometric designs have been created by anonymous artists, in some cases to attract tourists to an area. Since
6300-467: The food industry in autocoding systems to prevent food products being packaged and dated incorrectly. Codes are maintained internally on a food manufacturers database and associated with each unique product, e.g. ingredient variations. For each product run the unique code is supplied to the printer. Label artwork is required to allow the 2D Data Matrix to be positioned for optimal scanning. For black on white codes testing isn't required unless print quality
6426-461: The post-modernism movement. The mapping between messages and barcodes is called a symbology . The specification of a symbology includes the encoding of the message into bars and spaces, any required start and stop markers, the size of the quiet zone required to be before and after the barcode, and the computation of a checksum . Linear symbologies can be classified mainly by two properties: Some symbologies use interleaving. The first character
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#17327838694306552-662: The second boxed set , all feature an image of a crop circle that appeared in East Field in Alton Barnes , Wiltshire . On the night of 11–12 July 1992, a crop-circle-making competition with a prize of £ 3,000 (funded in part by the Arthur Koestler Foundation) was held in Berkshire . The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string,
6678-456: The "finder pattern") and two other borders consisting of alternating dark and light "cells" or modules (called the "timing pattern"). Within these borders are rows and columns of cells encoding information. The finder pattern is used to locate and orient the symbol while the timing pattern provides a count of the number of rows and columns in the symbol. As more data is encoded in the symbol, the number of cells (rows and columns) increases. Each code
6804-459: The 1970s and 1980s, software source code was occasionally encoded in a barcode and printed on paper ( Cauzin Softstrip and Paperbyte are barcode symbologies specifically designed for this application), and the 1991 Barcode Battler computer game system used any standard barcode to generate combat statistics. Artists have used barcodes in art, such as Scott Blake 's Barcode Jesus, as part of
6930-561: The 2000s due to the growth in smartphone ownership. Other systems have made inroads in the AIDC market, but the simplicity, universality and low cost of barcodes has limited the role of these other systems, particularly before technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) became available after 2023. In 1948, Bernard Silver , a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US overheard
7056-511: The App World application can natively scan barcodes and load any recognized Web URLs on the device's Web browser. Windows Phone 7.5 is able to scan barcodes through the Bing search app. However, these devices are not designed specifically for the capturing of barcodes. As a result, they do not decode nearly as quickly or accurately as a dedicated barcode scanner or portable data terminal . It
7182-492: The ECC 000 through 140 error correction can be recognized by the upper-right corner module being the inverse of the background color. (binary 1). According to ISO/IEC 16022, "ECC 000–140 should only be used in closed applications where a single party controls both the production and reading of the symbols and is responsible for overall system performance." Data Matrix was invented by International Data Matrix, Inc. (ID Matrix) which
7308-438: The ECC 200 error correction can be recognized by the upper-right corner module being the same as the background color. (binary 0). Additional capabilities that differentiate ECC 200 symbols from the earlier standards include: Older versions of Data Matrix include ECC 000, ECC 050, ECC 080, ECC 100, ECC 140. Instead of using Reed–Solomon codes like ECC 200, ECC 000–140 use a convolution-based error correction. Each varies in
7434-527: The English countryside. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower and Chorley gave interviews in 1991 about how they had made crop circles, circles started appearing all over the world. By 2001, approximately 10,000 crop circles have been reported internationally, from locations such as the former Soviet Union,
7560-568: The Fields . In 2009, The Guardian reported that crop circle activity had been waning around Wiltshire, in part because makers preferred creating promotional crop circles for companies that paid well for their efforts. A video sequence used in connection with the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London showed two crop circles in the shape of the Olympic rings . Another Olympic crop circle
7686-590: The Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described crop circles as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin [ id ] , research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated, "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven." Among others, paranormal enthusiasts, ufologists, and anomalistic investigators have offered hypothetical explanations that have been criticised as pseudoscientific by sceptical groups and scientists, including
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#17327838694307812-478: The Tully "saucer nest" case. The first film to depict a geometric crop circle, in this case created by super-intelligent ants, was the 1974 science-fiction film Phase IV . The film has been cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this phenomenon. The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared and spread since the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout
7938-648: The United Kingdom, Japan, the U.S., and Canada. Researchers have noted a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation. Although farmers expressed concern at the damage caused to their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles was often enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the increase of tourism and visits from scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking spiritual experiences. The market for crop circle interest consequently generated bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, T-shirts, and book sales. Since
8064-525: The amount of error correction it offers, with ECC 000 offering none, and ECC 140 offering the greatest. For error detection at decode time, even in the case of ECC 000, each of these versions also encode a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) on the bit pattern. As an added measure, the placement of each bit in the code is determined by bit-placement tables included in the specification. These older versions always have an odd number of modules, and can be made in sizes ranging from 9 × 9 to 49 × 49. All symbols utilizing
8190-549: The application program. On PCs running Windows the human interface device emulates the data merging action of a hardware "keyboard wedge", and the scanner automatically behaves like an additional keyboard. Most modern smartphones are able to decode barcode using their built-in camera. Google's mobile Android operating system can use their own Google Lens application to scan QR codes, or third-party apps like Barcode Scanner to read both one-dimensional barcodes and QR codes. Google's Pixel devices can natively read QR codes inside
8316-409: The approach. In cooperation with consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. , they developed a standardized 11-digit code for identifying products. The committee then sent out a contract tender to develop a barcode system to print and read the code. The request went to Singer , National Cash Register (NCR), Litton Industries , RCA, Pitney-Bowes , IBM and many others. A wide variety of barcode approaches
8442-450: The barcode gives the absolute coarse position. An "address carpet", used in digital paper , such as Howell's binary pattern and the Anoto dot pattern, is a 2D barcode designed so that a reader, even though only a tiny portion of the complete carpet is in the field of view of the reader, can find its absolute X, Y position and rotation in the carpet. Matrix codes can embed a hyperlink to
8568-494: The barley was 'lodged' or beaten down, while the interior area was very slightly mounded up." In Fortean Times , David Wood reported that in 1940 he made crop circles near Gloucestershire using ropes. In 1963, Patrick Moore described a crater in a potato field in Wiltshire that he considered was probably caused by an unknown meteoric body. In nearby wheat fields, there were several circular and elliptical areas where
8694-410: The best known brand of handheld scanners and mobile computers being produced by Symbol , a division of Motorola . Some ERP, MRP, and other inventory management software have built in support for barcode reading. Alternatively, custom interfaces can be created using a language such as C++ , C# , Java , Visual Basic.NET , and many others. In addition, software development kits are produced to aid
8820-426: The circle was made. As a result, Aranykalász Co., the owners of the land, sued the teens for 630,000 Ft (~$ 3,000 USD) in damages . The presiding judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the circle itself, amounting to about 6,000 Ft (~$ 30 USD), and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors who flocked to Székesfehérvár following
8946-548: The circles. Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created. Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley , who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers. He reported on "expert" sources such as The Wall Street Journal who had been easily fooled, and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods of creating
9072-571: The code adds. The encoding process is described in the ISO/IEC standard 16022:2006. Open-source software for encoding and decoding the ECC-200 variant of Data Matrix has been published. The diagrams below illustrate the placement of the message data within a Data Matrix symbol. The message is "Misplaced Pages", and it is arranged in a somewhat complicated diagonal pattern starting near the upper-left corner. Some characters are split in two pieces, such as
9198-458: The colored stripes encoding information such as ownership, type of equipment, and identification number. The plates were read by a trackside scanner located, for instance, at the entrance to a classification yard, while the car was moving past. The project was abandoned after about ten years because the system proved unreliable after long-term use. Barcodes became commercially successful when they were used to automate supermarket checkout systems,
9324-536: The computer. The older type is the RS-232 barcode scanner. This type requires special programming for transferring the input data to the application program. Keyboard interface scanners connect to a computer using a PS/2 or AT keyboard –compatible adaptor cable (a " keyboard wedge "). The barcode's data is sent to the computer as if it had been typed on the keyboard. Like the keyboard interface scanner, USB scanners do not need custom code for transferring input data to
9450-451: The customer on their home printer, or stored on their mobile device) allow the holder to enter sports arenas, cinemas, theatres, fairgrounds, and transportation, and are used to record the arrival and departure of vehicles from rental facilities etc. This can allow proprietors to identify duplicate or fraudulent tickets more easily. Barcodes are widely used in shop floor control applications software where employees can scan work orders and track
9576-587: The default Pixel Camera app. Nokia's Symbian operating system featured a barcode scanner, while mbarcode is a QR code reader for the Maemo operating system. In Apple iOS 11 , the native camera app can decode QR codes and can link to URLs, join wireless networks, or perform other operations depending on the QR Code contents. Other paid and free apps are available with scanning capabilities for other symbologies or for earlier iOS versions. With BlackBerry devices,
9702-517: The early 1990s, the UK arts collective Circlemakers, founded by Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg , and subsequently including Wil Russell and Rob Irving, has been creating crop circles in the UK and around the world as part of its art practice and also for commercial clients. The Led Zeppelin Boxed Set that was released on 7 September 1990, along with the remasters of the first boxed set , as well as
9828-489: The elements of which are encoded as bytes of 8 bits ; the byte b 7 b 6 b 5 b 4 b 3 b 2 b 1 b 0 {\displaystyle b_{7}b_{6}b_{5}b_{4}b_{3}b_{2}b_{1}b_{0}} with a standard numerical value ∑ i = 0 7 b i 2 i {\displaystyle \textstyle \sum _{i=0}^{7}b_{i}2^{i}} encodes
9954-505: The factory that was producing the equipment. On 26 June 1974, a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum was scanned, registering the first commercial use of the UPC. In 1971 an IBM team was assembled for an intensive planning session, threshing out, 12 to 18 hours a day, how the technology would be deployed and operate cohesively across the system, and scheduling a roll-out plan. By 1973, the team were meeting with grocery manufacturers to introduce
10080-619: The field element ∑ i = 0 7 b i α i {\displaystyle \textstyle \sum _{i=0}^{7}b_{i}\alpha ^{i}} where α ∈ F 256 {\displaystyle \alpha \in \mathbb {F} _{256}} is taken to be a primitive element satisfying α 8 + α 5 + α 3 + α 2 + 1 = 0 {\displaystyle \alpha ^{8}+\alpha ^{5}+\alpha ^{3}+\alpha ^{2}+1=0} . The primitive polynomial
10206-546: The fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but these do not appear overnight, and are always in the same places every year. A 1678 news pamphlet The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News Out of Hartfordshire describes a crop whose stalks were cut rather than bent. (see folklore section ). In 1686, an English naturalist , Robert Plot , reported on rings or arcs of mushrooms (see fairy rings ) in The Natural History of Stafford-Shire , proposing air flows from
10332-435: The grain inside the circles were correlated to the position of the grain inside the circle. In 1996, Joe Nickell objected that correlation is not causation , raising several objections to Levengood's methods and assumptions, and said, "Until his work is independently replicated by qualified scientists doing 'double-blind' studies and otherwise following stringent scientific protocols, there seems no need to take seriously
10458-528: The grass was flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle, and the reeds had been uprooted from the mud. The local police officer, the Royal Australian Air Force , and the University of Queensland concluded that it was most probably caused by natural causes, like a down draught, a willy-willy (dust devil), or a waterspout . In 1973, G.J. Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defence (Air Office), wrote to
10584-476: The industry from scanning by the mid-1970s. Those numbers were not achieved in that time-frame and some predicted the demise of barcode scanning. The usefulness of the barcode required the adoption of expensive scanners by a critical mass of retailers while manufacturers simultaneously adopted barcode labels. Neither wanted to move first and results were not promising for the first couple of years, with Business Week proclaiming "The Supermarket Scanner That Failed" in
10710-596: The initial W, and the third 'i' is in "corner pattern 2" rather than the usual L-shaped arrangement. Also shown are the end-of-message code (marked End), the padding (P) and error correction (E) bytes, and four modules of unused space (X). Multiple encoding modes are used to store different kinds of messages. The default mode stores one ASCII character per 8-bit codeword. Control codes are provided to switch between modes, as shown below. The C40, Text and X12 modes are potentially more compact for storing text messages. They are similar to DEC Radix-50 , using character codes in
10836-471: The landscape, but appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population, and cultural heritage monuments, such as Stonehenge or Avebury . They usually appear overnight. Nearly half of all crop circles found in the UK in 2003 were located within a 15 km (9.3 mi) radius of the Avebury stone circles. In contrast to crop circles or crop formations, archaeological remains can cause cropmarks in
10962-458: The length and data bytes are obscured by adding a pseudorandom value R(n), where n is the position in the byte stream. Prior to the expiration of US patent 5,612,524 in November 2007, intellectual property company Acacia Technologies claimed that Data Matrix was partially covered by its contents. As the patent owner, Acacia allegedly contacted Data Matrix users demanding license fees related to
11088-419: The linear and bull's eye printing patterns, as well as the mechanical and electronic systems needed to read the code. The patent was issued on 7 October 1952 as US Patent 2,612,994. In 1951, Woodland moved to IBM and continually tried to interest IBM in developing the system. The company eventually commissioned a report on the idea, which concluded that it was both feasible and interesting, but that processing
11214-432: The many dubious claims that Levengood makes, including his similar ones involving plants at alleged ' cattle mutilation ' sites." Nickell also criticised Levengood for using circular logic, stating: "There is, in fact, no satisfactory evidence that a single “genuine” (i.e., vortex-produced) crop-circle exists, so Levengood’s reasoning is circular: Although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research,
11340-532: The media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees. In 2000, Matthew Williams became the first man in the UK to be arrested for causing criminal damage after making a crop circle near Devizes . In November 2000, he was fined £100 plus £40 in costs. As of 2008 , no one else has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for criminal damage caused by creating crop circles. The scientific consensus on crop circles
11466-411: The opiate-laden poppies and running in circles. In science magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, for example Science Illustrated , one could read reports suggesting that the plants were bent by something that could be microwave radiation, rather than broken by physical impact. The magazines also contained serious reports of the absence of human influence and measurement of unusual radiation. Today, this
11592-494: The parameters: Crop circle A crop circle , crop formation , or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop , usually a cereal . The term was first coined in the early 1980s. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing done in hoaxes " by Taner Edis , professor of physics at Truman State University . Although obscure natural causes or alien origins of crop circles are suggested by fringe theorists , there
11718-450: The paranormal point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with their being made by hoaxers. Bower and Chorley confessed in 1991 to making the first crop circles in southern England. When some people refused to believe them, they deliberately added straight lines and squares to show that they could not have natural causes. In a copycat effect, increasingly complex circles started appearing in many countries around
11844-508: The patent. Cognex Corporation , a large manufacturer of 2D barcode devices, filed a declaratory judgment complaint on 13 March 2006 after receiving information that Acacia had contacted its customers demanding licensing fees. On 19 May 2008 Judge Joan N. Ericksen of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled in favor of Cognex. The ruling held that the '524 patent, which claimed to cover a system for capturing and reading 2D symbology codes,
11970-420: The point of sale, shoppers can get product discounts or special marketing offers through the address or e-mail address provided at registration. Barcodes are widely used in healthcare and hospital settings , ranging from patient identification (to access patient data, including medical history, drug allergies, etc.) to creating SOAP notes with barcodes to medication management. They are also used to facilitate
12096-401: The president of the local food chain, Food Fair , asking one of the deans to research a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friend Norman Joseph Woodland about the request, and they started working on a variety of systems. Their first working system used ultraviolet ink, but the ink faded too easily and was expensive. Convinced that the system
12222-467: The problem. He developed a system called KarTrak using blue, white and red reflective stripes attached to the side of the cars, encoding a four-digit company identifier and a six-digit car number. Light reflected off the colored stripes was read by photomultiplier vacuum tubes. The Boston and Maine Railroad tested the KarTrak system on their gravel cars in 1961. The tests continued until 1967, when
12348-643: The process. In 1981 the United States Department of Defense adopted the use of Code 39 for marking all products sold to the United States military. This system, Logistics Applications of Automated Marking and Reading Symbols (LOGMARS), is still used by DoD and is widely viewed as the catalyst for widespread adoption of barcoding in industrial uses. Barcodes are widely used around the world in many contexts. In stores, UPC barcodes are pre-printed on most items other than fresh produce from
12474-442: The range 0–39, and three of these codes are combined to make a number up to 40=64000, which is packed into two bytes (maximum value 65536) as follows: The resulting value of B1 is in the range 0–250. The special value 254 is used to return to ASCII encoding mode. Character code interpretations are shown in the table below. The C40 and Text modes have four separate sets. Set 0 is the default, and contains codes that temporarily select
12600-574: The research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations." Advocates of non-human causes discount on-site evidence of human involvement as attempts to discredit the phenomena. When Ridley wrote negative articles in newspapers, he was accused of spreading "government disinformation" and of working for the UK military intelligence service MI5 . Ridley responded by noting that many "cereologists" make good livings from selling books and providing high-priced personal tours through crop fields, and he claimed that they have vested interests in rejecting what
12726-445: The result of extraordinary meteorological phenomena ranging from freak tornadoes to ball lightning , but there is no evidence of any crop circle being created by any of these causes. In 1880, an amateur scientist, John Rand Capron, wrote a letter to the editor of journal Nature about some circles in crops and blamed them on a recent storm, saying their shape was "suggestive of some cyclonic wind action". In 1980, Terence Meaden,
12852-599: The resulting information would require equipment that was some time off in the future. IBM offered to buy the patent, but the offer was not accepted. Philco purchased the patent in 1962 and then sold it to RCA sometime later. During his time as an undergraduate, David Jarrett Collins worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad and became aware of the need to automatically identify railroad cars. Immediately after receiving his master's degree from MIT in 1959, he started work at GTE Sylvania and began addressing
12978-500: The rights to the original Woodland patent, attended the meeting and initiated an internal project to develop a system based on the bullseye code. The Kroger grocery chain volunteered to test it. In the mid-1970s the NAFC established the Ad-Hoc Committee for U.S. Supermarkets on a Uniform Grocery-Product Code to set guidelines for barcode development. In addition, it created a symbol-selection subcommittee to help standardize
13104-411: The same company, Barcoding systems are not radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Many companies use both technologies as part of larger resource management systems. A typical barcode system consist of some infrastructure, either wired or wireless that connects some number of mobile computers, handheld scanners, and printers to one or many databases that store and analyze the data collected by
13230-467: The separation and indexing of documents that have been imaged in batch scanning applications, track the organization of species in biology, and integrate with in-motion checkweighers to identify the item being weighed in a conveyor line for data collection. They can also be used to keep track of objects and people; they are used to keep track of rental cars, airline luggage, nuclear waste, express mail, and parcels. Barcoded tickets (which may be printed by
13356-492: The set design." In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in
13482-435: The sky as a cause. In 1991, meteorologist Terence Meaden linked this report with modern crop circles, a claim that has been compared with those made by Erich von Däniken . An 1880 letter to the editor of Nature by amateur scientist John Rand Capron describes how several circles of flattened crops in a field were formed under suspicious circumstances and possibly caused by "cyclonic wind action", stating "as viewed from
13608-725: The start of the 21st century, crop formations have increased in size and complexity, with some featuring as many as 2,000 different shapes and some incorporating complex mathematical and scientific characteristics. The researcher Jeremy Northcote found that crop circles in the UK in 2002 were not spread randomly across the landscape. They tended to appear near roads, areas of medium-to-dense population, and cultural heritage monuments such as Stonehenge or Avebury . He found that they always appeared in areas that were easy to access. This suggests strongly that these crop circles were more likely to be caused by intentional human action than by paranormal activity. Another strong indication of that theory
13734-413: The symbol has sustained 30% damage, assuming the matrix can still be accurately located. Data Matrix has an error rate of less than 1 in 10 million characters scanned. Symbols have an even number of rows and an even number of columns. Most of the symbols are square with sizes from 10 × 10 to 144 × 144. Some symbols however are rectangular with sizes from 8×18 to 16×48 (even values only). All symbols using
13860-409: The symbol that would need to be printed on the packaging or labels of all of their products. There were no cost savings for a grocery to use it, unless at least 70% of the grocery's products had the barcode printed on the product by the manufacturer. IBM projected that 75% would be needed in 1975. Economic studies conducted for the grocery industry committee projected over $ 40 million in savings to
13986-468: The system. At some level there must be some software to manage the system. The software may be as simple as code that manages the connection between the hardware and the database or as complex as an ERP , MRP , or some other inventory management software. A wide range of hardware is manufactured for use in barcode systems by such manufacturers as Datalogic, Intermec, HHP (Hand Held Products), Microscan Systems , Unitech, Metrologic, PSC, and PANMOBIL, with
14112-508: The time spent on a job. Barcodes are also used in some kinds of non-contact 1D and 2D position sensors . A series of barcodes are used in some kinds of absolute 1D linear encoder . The barcodes are packed close enough together that the reader always has one or two barcodes in its field of view. As a kind of fiducial marker , the relative position of the barcode in the field of view of the reader gives incremental precise positioning, in some cases with sub-pixel resolution . The data decoded from
14238-621: The wheat had been flattened. There was evidence of "spiral flattening". He thought they could be caused by air currents from the impact, since they led towards the crater. Astronomer Hugh Ernest Butler observed similar craters and said they were likely caused by lightning strikes. During the 1960s, there were many reports of UFO sightings and circular formations in swamp reeds and sugarcane fields in Tully, Queensland , Australia, and in Canada. For example, on 8 August 1967, three circles were found in
14364-476: The width ratios. Stacked symbologies are also optimized for laser scanning, with the laser making multiple passes across the barcode. In the 1990s development of charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers to read barcodes was pioneered by Welch Allyn . Imaging does not require moving parts, as a laser scanner does. In 2007, linear imaging had begun to supplant laser scanning as the preferred scan engine for its performance and durability. 2D symbologies cannot be read by
14490-452: The world's first animated tattoo utilizing a Data Matrix code in a collaborative process streamed live on Facebook. Data Matrix symbols are made up of modules arranged within a perimeter finder and timing pattern. It can encode up to 3,116 characters from the entire ASCII character set (with extensions). The symbol consists of data regions which contain modules set out in a regular array. Large symbols contain several regions. Each data region
14616-432: The world, including fractal figures. Physicists have suggested that the most complex formations might be made with the help of GPS and lasers. In 2009, a circle formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished, with some half-made circles. The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies,
14742-459: Was found to be easily fooled by dirt in certain applications, which greatly affected accuracy. The AAR abandoned the system in the late 1970s, and it was not until the mid-1980s that they introduced a similar system, this time based on radio tags. The railway project had failed, but a toll bridge in New Jersey requested a similar system so that it could quickly scan for cars that had purchased
14868-479: Was in the UK supermarket group Sainsbury's in 1972 using shelf-mounted barcodes which were developed by Plessey . In June 1974, Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio used a scanner made by Photographic Sciences Corporation to scan the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode on a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. QR codes , a specific type of 2D barcode, rose in popularity in the second decade of
14994-616: Was invented by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver and patented in the US in 1952. The invention was based on Morse code that was extended to thin and thick bars. However, it took over twenty years before this invention became commercially successful. UK magazine Modern Railways December 1962 pages 387–389 record how British Railways had already perfected a barcode-reading system capable of correctly reading rolling stock travelling at 100 mph (160 km/h) with no mistakes. An early use of one type of barcode in an industrial context
15120-594: Was merged into RVSI/ Acuity CiMatrix , who were acquired by Siemens AG in October 2005 and Microscan Systems in September 2008. Data Matrix is covered today by several ISO / IEC standards and is in the public domain for many applications, which means it can be used free of any licensing or royalties. Data Matrix codes use Reed–Solomon error correction over the finite field F 256 {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{256}} (or GF(2) ),
15246-403: Was sponsored by the Association of American Railroads in the late 1960s. Developed by General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) and called KarTrak ACI (Automatic Car Identification), this scheme involved placing colored stripes in various combinations on steel plates which were affixed to the sides of railroad rolling stock. Two plates were used per car, one on each side, with the arrangement of
15372-470: Was studied, including linear codes, RCA's bullseye concentric circle code, starburst patterns and others. In the spring of 1971 RCA demonstrated their bullseye code at another industry meeting. IBM executives at the meeting noticed the crowds at the RCA booth and immediately developed their own system. IBM marketing specialist Alec Jablonover remembered that the company still employed Woodland, and he established
15498-466: Was that inhabitants of the zone with the most circles had a historical tendency for making large-scale formations, including stone circles such as Stonehenge, earthen mounds such as Silbury Hill , long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow , and white horses in chalk hills . In 1991, two self-professed pranksters , Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, made headlines by saying they had started the crop circle phenomenon in 1978, using simple tools consisting of
15624-544: Was used to identify a dozen types of transmissions moving on an overhead conveyor from production to shipping. The other scanning system was installed at General Trading Company's distribution center in Carlstadt, New Jersey to direct shipments to the proper loading bay. In 1966 the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) held a meeting on the idea of automated checkout systems. RCA , which had purchased
15750-669: Was visible to passengers landing at nearby Heathrow Airport before and during the Games. A 3 ha (7 acres) crop circle depicting the emblem of the Star Wars Rebel Alliance was created in California in December 2017 by a father and his 11-year-old son as a spaceport for X-wing fighters . In 1992, Gábor Takács and Róbert Dallos, both then aged 17, were the first people to face legal action after creating
15876-474: Was workable with further development, Woodland left Drexel, moved into his father's apartment in Florida, and continued working on the system. His next inspiration came from Morse code, and he formed his first barcode from sand on the beach. "I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow lines and wide lines out of them." To read them, he adapted technology from optical soundtracks in movies, using
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