Featured in many sci-fi stories as a quicker, more efficient way to record and transfer information, barcodes are both extremely commonplace today, and still amazingly poorly understood by many.

Beep. We’ve come a long way since June 26, 1974 when the first bar code was scanned at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio. That legendary pack of Juicy Fruit proved that even the smallest of items could ...

The next generation of barcodes includes a heavy emphasis on QR codes and smartphone-use. Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1974, the first universal product code (UPC) was scanned at a Marsh Supermarket ...

Just over a year later, on June 26, 1974, a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum sold at a supermarket in Ohio became the first ...

Can Excel create barcodes? Yes, and it’s as easy as downloading the correct fonts. You don’t have to purchase any of those barcode software programs that you can find online unless you need a more ...

Benjamin Claeys is CEO of QR TIGER, MENU TIGER and GiftLips. He also hosts Stay QRious, a podcast about QR code best practices. Barcodes have been a staple of commerce since the first UPC barcode was ...

The UPC barcode, appearing as a sequence of vertical lines on a product label, revolutionized the retail industry 50 years ago by automating price lookup at checkout. While the technology has endured, ...

One of the most widely used technologies in retail is now 70. On this day in 1952, a patent was granted for the optically scanned barcode. It’s now universally recognized as a series of vertical lines ...

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news ...

An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link While you can use your iPhone's Camera app to automatically scan QR codes by just holding the camera in front of the QR code and taping a pop-up, ...