Barcodes were first introduced for use in open trade in the 1970's and since then the use of barcodes has become invaluable in many areas such as the Point Of Sale in the supermarket.

The Barcode Structure
A barcode is simply a machine readable typeface. Numbers, letters and other special characters are encoded in bar and space combinations which relate to the data usually shown at the base of the code.

This data is frequently a product identification number and is used to look up in a database where further information on the product is retrieved regarding price and description. Other meaningful data such as best before date, weight, batch number etc, can be encoded into certain barcode types.