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Barcodes

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Recently I found out via @beverycool on Twitter that Wolfram|Alpha encodes text as barcodes. For example, here is Peter Rowlett:

Barcode

Just imagine the uses! Well. Hmm. Not sure how useful, but it certainly seems neat! ;)

@beverycool is suggesting the Google Doodle for 7th October (a barcode of the word Google) might have been created using Wolfram|Alpha. From a blog post on walyou.com by Eran Abramson I discover the 7th October was the anniversary of the Barcode patent in the US by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952. And from a comment on that post by Scott Blake I found this video of Scott scanning the onscreen barcode: “Google barcode logo actually scans!!!”.

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