Technology · Level 3 · 205 words

What a Barcode Holds

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

On a June morning in 1974, in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a cashier dragged a pack of chewing gum across a laser scanner, and the register rang up the price by itself. The stripes on the pack were a barcode, and the moment is remembered for what those stripes did not contain.

A barcode holds no price. It holds a number that says what the item is; the price lives in the store's computer. That split sounds small, and it is the whole invention. When the price is printed on every can, changing it means a clerk with a sticker gun and an afternoon of shelves. When the price lives in one machine, changing it is a keystroke. The shelf label can say one thing on Monday and another on Friday, and no can needs touching.

The scanner also made the store observant. Every beep was a record: this item, this hour, this lane. For the first time a grocer knew what was selling while it was selling, and could reorder before a shelf went bare. Faster checkout was the visible gain. The invisible one was that the shop began to watch its shelves, and in time its customers, with the same patient eye.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What is the passage mainly about?

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A. The barcode separated an item's identity from its price, and that split changed how stores work.
The passage marks its own center: the split "sounds small, and it is the whole invention." The gum, the lasers, and the stickers are all in service of that one idea.

2. The passage suggests that before the barcode, stores probably

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C. changed prices less often, because each change cost hours of relabeling
If changing a price meant "a clerk with a sticker gun and an afternoon of shelves," each change carried a real cost in labor. The passage lets you conclude that stores would do it sparingly.

3. In this passage, "observant" most nearly means

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B. noticing and recording what happens
The next sentence supplies the definition: every beep became a record of item, hour, and lane. The store began to notice its own activity, not to follow rules or save money.

4. According to the passage, what was the first item scanned in 1974?

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D. A pack of chewing gum.
The opening sentence states it: a cashier in Troy, Ohio "dragged a pack of chewing gum across a laser scanner." The cans and shelf labels appear later, as examples of pricing.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.