Barcode Scanner

Hello. Have you ever been at the store and heard a little beep sound when your grown-up is buying groceries? That’s me. I am the Barcode Scanner. I bet you've wondered how I know the price of everything just by looking at it. Well, long ago, shopping was very, very slow. Imagine waiting in a super long line while someone had to look at every single can of soup and box of crackers and type the price into a machine. It took forever. People wished there was a faster way, and that’s where my story begins.

My story started with two very clever friends, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. They heard about a grocery store owner who wished he could speed up his checkout lines, and they thought, 'We can help with that.'. Norman thought and thought about the problem, wondering how he could create a code that a machine could read quickly. One day, he was relaxing on a sandy beach, listening to the waves. As he sat there, he started drawing lines in the sand with his fingers. He remembered learning something called Morse code in the Boy Scouts, which uses dots and dashes to send messages. Suddenly, he had an amazing 'aha.' moment. He pulled his fingers through the sand, making some lines long and some short, some thick and some thin. He realized that if dots and dashes could be a code, then thick and thin lines could be a code, too. It would be my special language. That day on the beach was my birthday, in a way. Norman and Bernard worked hard on this idea, and on October 7th, 1952, they got a special paper called a patent, which said the idea was all theirs.

Even though my idea was born, it took me a long time to get my first job. The world needed to invent the right kind of computer and a special light called a laser for me to work properly. I waited patiently for many years. Then, the big day finally arrived. On June 26th, 1974, I started my very first shift at a supermarket in a town called Troy, in Ohio. I was so excited and a little nervous. A shopper placed a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum on the counter. The cashier slid it over my glass window, and for the very first time, I read the black and white stripes and said, 'Beep.'. Everyone cheered. It was the best sound in the world because it meant I could finally start helping.

Today, I am beeping all over the world. My job is pretty simple, but very important. I shine a special red light onto the black and white stripes of a barcode. The stripes bounce the light back to my eye, and I can instantly read my secret language. I tell the computer exactly what the item is and how much it costs, all in the blink of an eye. You can find me in almost every grocery store, but I have other jobs, too. I help librarians check out books, I help doctors and nurses keep track of medicines in hospitals, and I help make sure packages get delivered to the right homes. I love my job because every time I 'beep,' I know I’m helping save a little bit of time so you and your family can get home faster to play, eat dinner, or read a story together.