BAR NONE Starting January1st you will find a change taking place in the appearance of the bar code diagram who get with about everything you buy. It will become larger. Just a tad, however, so don't fret about it.
Thirty year ago we had organized groups fighting the advent of the tiny mark, but common sense won out, in our view, at least, and what has since become well known as “the American Universal Bar Code” was developed along with computers and associated software required. It has been going along well since 1970 at which time the Europeans decided they wanted to emulate it. Since that time,when European nations planning a sort of European Union insisted that a new line must be be added to the code diagram and modifications made to handle it in related computers and software.
I think, perhaps, our use of the word “Universal” in the original name irked Europeans a little bit - sounding somewhat of world-wide application -and much of the bickering reminds us of our own strange abberations during the frightful days of the “Y2K” era as we approached the dreaded new century in which we now live rather comfortably.. Since its inception the code has been, more or less, there ...present all the time all the time, keeping our grocer's shelves stocked and making prices more uniform, but largely ignored by shoppers.
There has been a running battle of a sort ever since 1977 when the European nations gathering together to form a European Union, set up a system based on ours but insisting that an additional bar be added to the diagram. They wanted a line to tell from which of the countries represented the product originated. The idea made sense from the start, but we have been against acceptance since 1977. Last month Europe won. Rightfully so, too, and starting January lst the bar code with tell you where the product originated.
“The European Article Numbering Code” will be our standard, Ours was not so “universal” after all. The new bar is already in use in most foreign countries and all new an scanners must read the13-bar code. It does not call for any immediate change in existing codes on shelves, because the new 13-bar scanners can read the old fashioned 12 bar code imprints.
This relatively small gimmick has been of major importance to our commercial world and has heled us attain capabilities in supplying the needs of our enlarged economy with new efficiency and speed. Doesn't it strike you as being odd that any suggestions of such changes so often meet with opposition - this one a “Thirty Years War of Words” about adding a beneficial bar?. It may be that is one way of “testing” the actual validity of a suggested idea, but it sure slows us all up in the long haul.
A.L.M. July 19, 2004 [c488wds]
