We see them more and more often, on restaurant tables, at bus stops, on consumer products. But how does it come about, and more importantly what is a QR code?
If the origins of this technology and how it actually works interest you, this post is for you! Let’s start with the birth of the QR code.
The letters QR stand for Quick Response (“fast responding”), and the famous little square was invented in 1994 by a Japanese company, Denso Wave, to quickly and efficiently track parts for Toyota cars.
Masahiro Hara, manager of the department that developed the first QR Codes in 1994.
Its main advantage over the traditional bar code was very simple: the amount of characters (letters and numbers) it could contain. Let’s look at this example, in which we created a barcode and a QR bearing the same information, the first verse of the Divine Comedy:
In 1999 the company decided to make the license to use QR codes public, and since the second half of the two thousandths these have found increasing applications in a wide variety of fields.
In fact, a wide variety of information can be transmitted with a QR code, for example:
- Business cards
- Events
- Wi-fi credentials
- Phone contacts
- Payment data
- Links to websites
It is precisely the latter application that has caught on the most in the present day, as surfing the Internet gives us access to almost infinite amounts of information. Consequently, our example from earlier can take a quantum leap:
It is therefore obvious that in the age of the Internet, the QR code has in fact become this: a link between the physical and the digital, a link between the reality we can touch and the information we can gather from the web. It is precisely this feature that with the advent of the pandemic has led to a great resurgence in the use of this technology.
If QR codes interest you and you want to learn more, follow QualityChain on our social channels.
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About QualityChain
QualityChain helps Italian agribusiness SMEs transform their products from simple exhibits to true digital experiences capable of enhancing their uniqueness. QualityChain is a transparent, smartphone-friendly space in which to share with consumers the history and values of small Italian producers, a showcase from which to observe the skilled hands that work the land, the wine, the bread, and everything good that our companies produce.
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