A standard method of identifying the manufacturer and product category of a particular item.

The barcode was adopted in the 1970's because the bars were easier for machines to read than optical characters.

The main drawbacks of barcodes are that they don't identify unique items and so scanners have to have "line of sight" to read them.

A computer peripheral for printing barcode labels or tags which can be attached to physical objects.

Barcode printers are commonly used to label cartons before shipment or to label retail items with barcode symbology; that is, a specific type of barcode for tracking commercial items in stores.

In computer science, an optical scanning device that reads texts which have been converted into a special bar code.