I always love seeing what the next doodle for Google will be. Whether it be a holiday, someone famous’ birthday, an anniversary of some sort – they are always beautifully designed and show great creativity to me. Today, when I typed “google.com” into my web browser, like I do everyday, a new doodle appeared, but one that I wasn’t sure about. It was a bar code. In fact, it was this bar code:
Today, the usual Google logo was replaced by the ubiquitous black-and-white bar code design to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the first bar code patent. Very cool. Upon further investigation, I learned a little more about the bar code.
On October 7, 1952, inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver were granted the first patent for their invention. The only difference between the bar code we know today and the one Woodland and Silver invented was that it was comprised of a series of concentric circles, not the 59 black-and-white vertical lines synonymous with the current design.
Earlier this year, on June 26, the bar code celebrated its 35th birthday. In 1974, a scanner in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, met the simple black-and-white striped bar code design tacked onto a 10-piece pack of Juicy fruit gum. Now, more than 10 billion bar codes are scanned in 25 industries and in places including airports, hospitals, and shipping centers, according to Motorola.
I decided, after reading this, that I wanted my own bar code. One for Tarte Advertising – and that is exactly what we now have. Want to make your own? Check out this free online bar code generator.
Read more about the Google doodle at the following links:
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/07/make-your-own-barcode-just-like-google/
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/07/google-barcode-logo-latest-in-doodle-line/
