The Food and Drug Administration is phasing in rules that will require bar codes on hospital medication packets to guard against errors that cause an estimated 7,000 deaths annually. Inside hospital ...

Since the 1970s, bar codes have provided a reliable, inexpensive form of machine-readable identification. Although bar coding has numerous benefits, its primary function is to error-proof the ...

The Food and Drug Administration, after a year of deliberation (see story), issued a final ruling yesterday that requires pharmaceutical companies to apply bar codes to thousands of prescription and ...

The passing of Alan Haberman, the chief supporter of bar-code technology in the 1960s and 1970s (see Remembering Alan Haberman), has prompted technology history Edward Tenner to post an item comparing ...

In 1948, a supermarket executive showed up at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia with a request: He wanted the engineers there to design a technology that could encode information ...

Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, ...

Amazon Mobile for iPhone now has a bar code scanner that lets you see, scan, and buy products on the spot. Jessica Dolcourt VP, Content Operations and Commerce, CNET Group and CNET Labs Jessica is a ...

Bar codes are traded all over the world among companies and the codes are not a conclusive way to determine a product’s country of origin. Bar code prefixes are assigned based on the location of the ...

A federal district court judge invalidated patents on bar code products--in a victory over one of the technology's most prolific patent collectors. Philip Pro, chief judge of the U.S. District Court ...