Barcodes

[Mintox]

Yo wondering how barcodes work? For instance CDs. how come if you buy a CD from HMV or Virgin the till says the artists name etc - does the thickness of the barcodes relate to letters / number or even binary or do the shops scan one and input the details into their main frame?? and can i also get a scanner for my PC so i scan random things and keep a list of stuff i got??

[TheHitMaker]

The thickness of the bars represent a numerical value. Each object with a bar code has the first part of the code saying what type of thing it is, and the last part specifies the object, eg artist, cd,.newspaper etc. You can get a scanner which will read the codes, but you would have to get a database of what codes relate to what items to make use of it.

[quattro]

does the first part of the code relate to the country of origin ? 5=uk?

[lodekka]

There's some information on how they work on this link, though it's slightly heavy going! http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/english/codes/barcodes.html
#start