From Morse Code to QR Codes...and beyond!

July 15, 2020

⌛ Reading time: 12 minutes

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Samuel Morse himself would not have believed that his invention could have survived beyond a few dozen of years. Living in an era of innovation and creativity, many of the inventions of that time born and died in a matter of years, but Morse Code, was used extensively by many many years since its inception back in 1835. As many inventions by in time, Morse Code actually has grandsons spread all over the world, and those grandsons make their grandpha so proud for being the first one in opening a successful and incredible road to a future where representing things as a code makes life easier for people just like Morse Code did with those people in the past.

Representing things as codes has indeed helped many people and bussiness to ease some things that otherwise, could have been a little more complicated. Starting from Morse Code to the present day, many people and companies have been involved in the bussiness of develop better codes, better readers and better ways to improve people´s life....simplifying things thru codes, increasingly reaching a greater number of use cases for them.

All started with a need, an idea and....sea sand?

Back in 1949, a young graduate student was wrestling with the concept of automatically capturing information about a product. He was specifically researching on technology that could solve a problem proposed a year before in 1948 when a local food chain store owner approached Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia asking about research into a method of automatically reading product information during checkout. Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver were the two in charge of solving the problem.

Fig 1. *Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland, the inventors of the barcodes (https://www.timetoast.com)*

Norman believed that the dots and dashes of Morse Code would to be a good model to follow due to that code could represent letters and numbers with symbols, but he could not figure out how to use those patterns to solve his problem. Then, one day as he relaxed at the beach in Miami, he idly drew dots and dashes in the sand. As his fingers elongated the dashes he looked at the result and...he knew he had finally solve it!

In an interview with Smithsonian magazine in 1999, Mr. Woodland said: “I poked my four fingers into the sand and for whatever reason — I didn’t know — I pulled my hand toward me and drew four lines. I said: ‘Golly! Now I have four lines, and they could be wide lines and narrow lines instead of dots and dashes.”

...and so, in this peculiar way, the barcode was born. It was not the usual barcode as we can see it today in stores and printed in every box of a given product. The barcode as we know it today didn't exist before 1974. But what did exist was its strange circular predecessor, that one invented by Mr. Woodland. In the same interview with Smithsonian magazine he said: “Then, only seconds later, I took my four fingers—they were still in the sand—and I swept them round into a circle.” ...as he believed that way the code could be read in the same way in any direction that it was read.

He and his partner would receive later in 1952 a US patent over that idea(they called it: “Classifying Apparatus and Method”). It was a total success but implementing the reading of this code was too difficult for the technology of that time; so years later it was improved by IBM engineer George Joseph Laurer giving birth to what we now know as actual barcodes. And that, linked to the invention of the laser, revolutionized forever the way to track a product and get information about it in just seconds.

Fig 2. *The very first barcodes weren't bars at all! (https://www.explainthatstuff.com/)*

Fig 3. A simple “Hello Coil” encoded into a barcode as we know it today.

Linear barcodes are commonly referred to as first-generation barcodes and has many advantages, for example: as data is generated in one direction is easier to generate those patterns compared to generating data in multi-dimensions, they´re easier to scan and read which allows people to use simple and inexpensive scanners to read the codes and their implementation reduces labor costs improving productivity and production management, but as many things in life, this kind of codes despite having many advantages has some disadvantages too: they can only store a small amount of data and once distorted, the information cannot be scanned correctly and they also depend on external databases to complement the information they offer.

That is why, over time, and given some basic needs and requirements that normal barcodes could not meet, the appearance of new and innovative codes became necessary: the time of QR Codes began!

A new type of codes: having time for a quick read!

QR Codes(Quick Response code) is not something new as many people believe. It was invented back in 1994 but widely used nowadays.

A team of developers led by Masahiro Hara at Denso Wave in Japan created QR codes in 1994. These were technological enhancements on traditional barcodes, which helped the company track automobile parts faster. The technology could also encode more details that a single scan could decipher in a matter of milliseconds.

QR codes are 2D, so they represent information in two directions: vertically and horizontally. That’s how they’re able to hold much more details than possible with 1D codes like regular barcodes. The Denso Wave team also came up with a position detecting pattern consisting of square marks to optimize the speed of reading codes. Each QR code has these marks. Today, a QR code can encode thousands of characters.

Fig 4. A simple “Hello Coil” encoded into a QR Code.

When Denso Wave invented QR codes, it just wanted to automate inventory management in a way that traditional barcodes couldn’t. The intended application was purely industrial, but the technology’s capabilities and versatility inspired its gradual adoption in other industries, including consumer advertising. The information stored in a QR Code is usually URLs, but anything can be stored, from contact data to calendar data, email addresses, phone numbers, SMS opening, plain text and geolocation. You can even request a cryptocurrency payment by encoding the request into a QR Code. :)

Additionally, while the company patented the invention, it waived the rights and released the technology’s specifications to the public. The waiver allowed individuals or companies to leverage standardized QR codes as they wished, free of charge and that quickly helped spread its use as a replacement for barcodes in many sectors or industries wishing not to rely in a separate database to store some key data for a product.

There are about 30 different types of QR Codes(one for each use case: URL, email, App download....) One awesome property of QR Codes is you can fully customize it according to your personal needs or to match your brand requirements. QR Codes can be customized with specific designs and color options. You can customize the shape and form of the corner elements and the body of the QR code. You can also set your own colors for all QR code elements and add a gradient color to the QR code body even. And, as you, dear reader, could see in the previous image, you can even embed a small image in QR Code to make it look more customized according to your needs....really awesome!! :)

Fig 5. A heavily customized QR Code leading to my Twitter profile.

As barcodes, QR Codes has advantages and disadvantages too. Despite been widely accepted because the ease of use and the ability to store more information than a regular barcode, QR Codes can indeed become distorted as happens with regular barcodes which can lead to improper reading by a device; besides, when people are scanning a QR Code the scanning device can never really know where the code is going to lead you, so, unless you have specifically configured the scanning tool not proccess automatically the decoded info(like automatically open links in browser) you could end with a virus in your phone or PC or maybe redirected to a pornographic site on the Internet and last, but no least, as QR Codes do not rely in any databse to get the info from the information encoded into a QR Code could be potentially outdated which can lead to misinformations and the actual need of replacing all outdated QR Codes which is a laborious and expensive process.

There are other types of 2D codes like Datamatrix Codes which can encode the information just like QR Code does with few differences between each other and as so, they have almost the same uses, benefits and disadvantages.

As technology continues to progress at a faster rate than ever and the human mind never stops looking for better and improved ways to do certain things, it is completely understandable that the evolution about how to represent certain types of information goes from some printed ink paper(bars and squares) to the tech side....here we go Morse Code: welcome to the future!! **:)**

Morse Code has a techie grandson!!! :o

Yep, as weird as it can sound after a long way going from dots and dashes to bars and squares, we have come to the techie side of this matter.

Some people would have wondered sometime if putting a tiny chip in a box containing information about that specific product would make sense...after all, BarCodes and QR Codes are printed in paper...what about printed chips?

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a wireless technology which allows for the transfer of data such as text or numbers between two NFC enabled devices. NFC tags, for example stickers, contain small microchips with little antennas which can store a small amount of information for transfer to another NFC device, such as a mobile phone.

Fig 6. An NFC Tag in form of a sticker, you can program that chip the way you want and then, retrieve that info just like that – it looks like dots and dashes elongated into thin or thicker lines isn't?...remember something? **:)** *(https://seritag.com)*

You can read more about NFC history here, but the fact is that it is completely possible to print a chip with some sort of information, stick it in a given product, poster, voucher or whatever you want and then read the information provided by using another NFC powered device...how cool is that?! **:)**

Putting it simple: those tiny chips are small and cheap enough to integrate into all sorts of products: from business cards to prescription bottles and even ruggedized labels meant for outdoor use. They can be bought in bulk (they even come packaged like stickers, as you can see) and then program them for your (or your company) own purposes.

An NFC Tag itself consists of three basic components: an NFC chip, an antenna and something to keep it together. The NFC chip is a tiny microchip which contains a small amount of memory and the technology to allow it to communicate. Those tiny devices are passive, meaning they don't have any power source. Instead, they literally “draw power” from the device that reads them, thanks to magnetic induction. When a reader gets close enough to a tag, it energizes it and transfer data from that tag.

Fig 7. *“When a reader gets close enough to a tag, it energizes it and transfer data from that tag” (https://xamoom.com)*

Adding data to an NFC tag is called encoding and you can encode almost the same kind of information you can store or encode into a QR Code: text, URL, ID, email or a telephone number; however, the amount of information encoded depends on the type of NFC chip used. In fact, most NFC tags can store only about a sentence of text which makes sense given NFC tags are generally regarded as being a reference to data rather than a data store itself.

NFC Tags can be encoded and re-encoded several times using an NFC capable phone and an App used for this purpose and you can lock the small device so no one(even you) can be able to alter the information provided later.

NFC Tags have found their application area in mainly 4 places: asset management, marketing, information access and personal use but can be used in almost any imaginable place you can have in mind. Despite been a relative new technology, NFC Tags have found their place really soon in the growing industrial market helping people and bussiness to track products and promote services in a very “techie way” :)

While NFC Tags technology sounds exciting and very promising most experts believe that NFC Tags will not replace QR Codes and they will sit alongside each other having both their advantages and disadvantages and complementing each other. QR Codes are free to create and free to print while NFC tags will always cost something – even if that cost is gradually falling to pennies till today and that´s a disadvantage they have but in the other hand NFC tags can be hidden behind a brand logo or discreetly within the liner of a handbag making them impossible to remove yet completely readable which is an advantage they have over printed 2D codes like QR Codes or BarCodes.

Final thougths...by now

From Morse Code representing letters and numbers to NFC Tags encoding small amounts of information, an extensive path has been traveled that has led humanity to improve the way in which information is encoded and made accessible to the end user with the possibility of leaving traceability while accessing it with ease.

BarCodes, QR Codes, DataMatrix and NFC Tags could be only the begining, the tip of the iceberg, regarding coding and accesing some product information or simple data as an example. What we think as a clear end other people like me believe it is just the start, the begining of the road...after all, human mind nevers stops thinking: Samuel Morse lead the way but in human timeline we are almost in the same space than him, contemporaries somehow...no one knows what does the future hold...we just need to wait...

By the way: upper piece of Morse Code at he begining of this article means:

“Hello and be very welcome here dear reader.”

...and now:

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“See you in next article!” :)

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