Vöötkoodidele

Vöötkoodidele refers to the Estonian term for barcodes. Barcodes are a machine-readable optical labeling system that contains information about the item to which it is attached. They typically consist of parallel lines of varying widths and spacing. These lines can be scanned by a special device called a barcode reader or scanner.

The most common type of barcode is the Universal Product Code (UPC), widely used in North America for retail items. Other popular linear barcodes include the Code 39 and Code 128. In addition to linear barcodes, there are also two-dimensional barcodes, such as QR codes (Quick Response codes) and Data Matrix codes, which can store more information than their linear counterparts.

Barcodes are used extensively in various industries, including retail for inventory management and point-of-sale transactions, logistics for tracking shipments, libraries for managing books, and healthcare for patient identification and medication tracking. The primary advantage of barcodes is their ability to quickly and accurately transfer data, reducing manual entry errors and improving efficiency.

The development of barcode technology began in the 1960s, with the first commercial application in the grocery industry in the 1970s. Since then, barcodes have become an indispensable tool in modern commerce and information management. The underlying principle involves encoding data into a visual pattern that can be decoded by optical scanners.