You are here: Home>Collections>Body Art  Barcode celebrates its
60th birthday  PTI Oct 8, 2012, 05.03AM IST  LONDON: Barcode,
the distinctive black-and-white stripes that provide details
relating to an object you purchase, has turned 60.  There are
more than five million individual barcodes in use worldwide,
according to regulator GS1 UK.   Barcode is an optical machine-
readable representation of data relating to the object to which
it is attached. The first item to be scanned by a barcode was a
packet of chewing gum in an Ohio supermarket in 1974, the report
said.  Barcode did not get a universal welcome, with some wine
manufacturers refusing to use it on their labels for aesthetic
reasons. Now it occasionally doubles as body art, with US singer
Pink among those who sport a barcode tattoo.