The Universal Product Code (UPC) is a barcode symbology (i.e., a specific type of barcode) that is widely used in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and in other countries for tracking trade items in stores. Its most common form, the UPC-A, consists of 12 numerical digits, which are uniquely assigned to each trade item. Along with the related EAN barcode, the UPC is the only barcode allowed for scanning trade items at the point of sale, per GS1 standards. UPC data structures are a component of GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers). All of these data structures follow the global GS1 standards.
Read more about Universal Product Code: Composition, Encoding, Numbering, History
Famous quotes containing the words universal, product and/or code:
“Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of human actions.... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert.... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The site of the true bottomless financial pit is the toy store. It’s amazing how much a few pieces of plastic and paper will sell for if the purchasers are parents or grandparent, especially when the manufacturers claim their product improves a child’s intellectual or physical development.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)