IDEA N^o 84

THE QR CODE

On 26 June 1974, at Marsh’s Supermarket in Ohio, cashier Sharon Buchanan scanned the world’s first barcode. The product was a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. The price, 67 cents.

The barcode would stay in its onedimensional format for 20 years. This all changed in the early ’90s at Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota. An engineer called Masahiro Hara was tasked with creating a barcode that could hold more information than the existing format. His solution was the Quick Response (QR) code – a barcode that could be read horizontally and vertically.

Traditional barcodes are scanned by a beam of light. Hara’s version could not only hold more information but also be read digitally. The biggest challenge, however, was how to scan this more complex code accurately. Hara’s solution was to add positional information. The reader first locates three distinctive squares at the corners of the QR code and then normalizes the image. The rest of the black squares throughout the QR code carry the data.

In 1994, Toyota employed Hara’s QR code to identify and track parts throughout its manufacturing process. Generously, the company chose not to enforce its patent, and QR codes were soon adopted across Japanese industry.

For eight years, the QR code remained an industrial tool. Then, in the early 2000s, in order to make their production processes more transparent, these codes were made available to the public. Handset manufacturers built QR code-readers into smartphones; NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese telecoms company, ran advertising campaigns teaching people how to use them.

The advertising industry was quick to see the codes’ potential. Supermarkets began them as mobile coupons. Food producers used them to provide additional nutritional information. The film industry added them to posters so people could watch trailers on their phones. Many other businesses simply embedded URLs into QR codes so people could visit their website without having to type in an address.

Despite its success in Japan, the QR code has not caught on as well in the rest of the world. There was a flurry of excitement in 2007, with the release of the iPhone, but the QR code has not lived up to the hype. This is partly a matter of timing. Advancements in image-recognition technology and augmented-reality applications have increased expectations beyond a glorified barcode. Crucially, though, there is widespread confusion about how they work. People expect to be able to point their camera phone at a QR code and immediately get an enhanced experience. Finding and installing the appropriate app is proving a step too far, especially when the result is often just a link to a corporate website.■

‘Despite its success in Japan, the QR code has not caught on as well in the rest of the world.’

A still from the video for the Pet Shop Boys single ‘Integral’ created by the Rumpus Room. QR codes were embedded throughout, linking to online content related to civil liberties.