Google has replaced its logo with a barcode today. TechCrunch says the barcode probably says Google and was created with some type of barcode image processing tool. The reason Google is doing this today is to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the barcode.
Today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code. Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent on October 1949, and it was granted, No. 2,612,994 (pdf), on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so that it could be scanned in any direction.
There is another recent story that is relevant to bar codes. Willard Boyle and George Smith won the 2009 Nobel prize in Physics for their invention of a light-sensitive chip that converts patterns of light into digital information. This technology is used in barcodes.
A more advanced type of wo dimensional barcode called the QR code is used widely in Japan. The QR code, which debuted in 1994, makes it possible to includes characters, images and photos, instead of just dull black and white lines. This colorful example below is a QR code created by artist Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton.
