A Brief History of the QR Code, and other scannable things - EMF 2026

Thank you very much. Also, big thank you for coming to a talk at half six. This is the you could all be eating your dinner right now and you're choosing to be here. So, I really thank you. Um, I'm going to give a talk about QR codes and other scannable things. It covers other things that are black and white. Um, how do I end up writing a talk about QR codes? So, here you ask. They're quite a dry subject. I'll try and make it a bit more exciting. Um, it started off I did a project at work that was essentially similar to the WhatsApp um remote login. You can scan it with your phone and it logs you in on the on your desktop. And then I got really deep into like these QR codes that how do we prove that's us? How do we know that's secure? How do we know what's going on there? How do you know that's from WhatsApp? Spoilers, it's not from WhatsApp. Um, how do you know that's from WhatsApp? There's no way to prove it. And then uh my partner decided to run a slide tonight. I highly recommend you doing this with your friends. Get some beers, get some wine. Everyone brings a 10-minute presentation about anything they want to do. And I talk about QR codes and then it kind of evolved from there to become this talk. So highly recommend running a slide tonight. So our story begins in 1952 where the patent for the barcode was first registered by RCA. And it, you know, looks a lot similar to what we're used to. You know, some black lines with gaps in between. Um, so far so normal. Um, hold on. What? What? That's a barcode. Okay, that is the that is the barcode. Uh, patent. Um, it was round. Looks a bit weird, doesn't it? Has anyone ever seen one of these in real life? Or was this the first time anyone's seen this? Some people love patents. Um, so yeah, the first patent in 1952 for a barcode was round, which is very strange. But they didn't really get much traction from there. they got pattered and they didn't really enter the wild until I I found kind of first evidence of a barcode being used is in 1962. Of course, it's trains in the UK. Um they had a a physical metal barcode on each uh truck and car and then they would as they whiz by at high speeds a scanner would be able to scan them in 1962. I think that's quite impressive. And so they know each one have a unique barcode. So 1973 now finally it's the barcodes time to shine. The big problem is is that shops all over the world specifically in the US are struggling because when you turn up to the the checkout with your um items they're all individually uh numbered with their price and then the checkout person has to tighten them all in by hand and you know big shops are suffering local shops are suffering everyone's really struggling. So the so the the the all the supermarkets get together in the US and put forward the concept of a universal product code and different companies pitch their concept of a universal product code which looks something like this. These are all the different options that were that were proposed. You there's the old classic circular one. We're all we're all friends of the circular one now. Um but you know the one we all know and love is the barcode uh which is from IBM. It's got 12 numbers. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um and that won the universal product code um submission and then started rolling out across the US and then over to here and then you know people were suddenly using them and I think the first item ever run through a barcode scanner and sold was a pack of Wrigley's mint gum. Um so but now we have a new thing called the European article number. It's sometimes also called the international article number. It's got one extra number. Oo so it's 13 digits rather than 12. But that's it. That's our classic perfect barcode. So, barcodes are starting to take over the world from the 70s. Um, and suddenly supermarkets are going super quick, which is great. Um, so how do they actually store this information? I might be teaching you to suck eggs here, but each section is made up of seven gaps. And depending on how many are filled in with black or not, that gives you a different number. This is important for the next part. You'll see that six is shaped with two bars with a gap in between. And that's very important for the next piece of information. Um, I went into a rabbit hole. I found a book that was u um a conspiracy theory book about how this is in 1982. A conspiracy theory that eventually uh barcodes would take over the world. We'd have barcodes on our foreheads and um there was actually evidence in this book that the number 666 is inside every barcode. Uh I read the whole thing. It's it's quite a wild ride. It took me everything in my everything in my urge to not turn this entire talk to be about this book. But you know the thrust of the book the new money system is to discuss how barcodes for products placed in people become the universal system but importantly at the bottom the coded use of 666 and the universal product code barcode etc. But really this this book is really that's burying the lead a little bit. This book is going to tell you the identity of the consortium promoting the global use of 666 and expand upon the users of this number to include heads of nations, departments of governments, religious orders and world organizations. Whoa, big stuff. Obviously, it's absolute nonsense, but you'll see they tried to put forward that in the in the barcode there are these points in the beginning, middle, and end that that show where the beginning, middle, end is, and they look a little bit like a six. They're not, but they look a little bit like a six. So, this book was trying to posit that uh the mark of the devil is inside every barcode. So, here we are, 1994. Barcodes have been going strong, but we're now going to enter the second dimension. Ooh. >> Yeah. Um a chap called Masahiara working for a subsidiary of Toyota um invents the QR code. Uh now QR code is made because a barcode can only hold so much information. Um it can only hold those 13 numbers. It's just simply not enough for the car parts that 202 wants to label. They want to have something really quick and that can hold enough information. And so he comes up with this elegant idea of the QR code. And there's the original part of the original patent in Japanese. like lovely elegant illustration there showing the different parts of the QR code and how the the key parts is is that those three anchor points are there. That's what you always need so the camera can always know which way up the code is and which way um yeah how to how to read it. There's other things available. There's other scannable things available and you may have seen some of these in the wild. I've never seen a coda block in the wild, I don't think, but data matrix you might have seen. You'll see it often on uh medical related things or on like Amazon parcels or things like that. They're useful because they're a lot smaller than QR codes. You can fit a lot more information in. Aztec code is really fun because it looks like a little bit of a pyramid. And PDF 417 as well. You'll see like it's on like US passports, I think. And that's essentially a barcode just stacked on top of each other. So you could have an infinite number of uh barcodes if you're willing to print a PDF 417 as tall as you want. Um the really amazing thing about barcodes is that they can uh they can be damaged and still give you the information. So this is a valid QR code goes to Wikipedia because it's got enough redundant information in the QR code to give you the the information you need and that's called read Solomon error correction. Uh here's an example of that. This goes to a really good blog post that will explain it in far more technical detail that I can do in 20 minutes or even could do with several hours. So if we to scan it, these are all the same QR code. They're the same information going to the same URL. But as you can see, they get steadily more and more um busy, let's say. But you can see the information repeating over and over, especially on the the third one. So if you damaged any part of these QR codes, well of the second two on the right, you would still be able to read them. And I think that's amazing that there's that kind of technology. The left one on the left though, I think if you damaged any part of it, you would you lose it and there would be no recoverable information. Um, that means we can do some silly things with QR codes. You know, that's how you can have a logo in the middle is because it can cover up that part in the middle and you're losing that information. But because there's enough um information left over in the rest of the QR code, it will still work absolutely fine. Um you can change the color, you can do gradients, you can even change the the shape of each individual you want, but that will send make you go to QR code jail if you do this. But don't do it. I just don't like it. That's why. Uh okay, so we're in 2010 and now QR codes are really starting to get everywhere. Do you ever anyone remember seeing these on bus stops? I think they still exist. I don't think anyone's ever tapped an NFC phone on there to actually use it. Maybe just to try out and see what happens. Um, and Kaka started coming out. Everyone was like, "This is ridiculous. These will never take off. They're not popular. They're awful. They're so ugly. They'll never get anywhere." Oh, how little did we know? Um, we started to see a new crime happening. Um, you can very easily print out a QR code, stick it on any sign, and you can cover up that QR code, for example, on that sign. Suddenly, people are scanning your link, going to your app to give you money for parking. Um, and you've heard of fishing. Well, this has a much more awful name called quishing. Um, but you know, it happens. And um, yeah, this is the one of the greatest problems with QR codes. I'll go into that a bit now. So, that's the big problem at the end of the day. Like, when you see a QR code, you have no way to confirm that that's who it's from. If you may have noticed, there's QR codes floating around here that have trustworthy QR code on written on them. Those are mine. Um, I hope people scan them. Um, you have no way of knowing before you scan it. You have no way to know where it's going, what it's going to do, or where it's going to send you. Um, there's a post about it on the National Cyber Security Center and they they say that QR codes used in pubs or restaurants are probably safe for you to scan. Scanning Q scanning QR codes at open spaces like stations and car parks might be riskier. And if you receive an email with a QR code in it and you're asked to scan it, you should exercise caution. That last one's interesting because lots of um scanners for emails don't necessarily scan the QR code. You can put So if you put like a a fishing link in the email and it would get caught out by a scanner, but they don't necessarily scan the QR code part. So if you get a QR code in an email, don't scan it. Don't touch it. Oh, whoa. What's this? Hold on a minute. There's a new contender arrives in 2010. Does anyone remember these? >> Whoa. There are dozens of us. Uh, this is the Microsoft tag. And the Microsoft tag revolutionized the way of doing QR codes. Instead of storing the information about the tag in the tag, it just links to a URL on Microsoft servers. Now, you may have opinions about having everything hosted through Microsoft, but they solve this issue because suddenly you can uh you can cut someone off if they're using your QR the tags inappropriately. You can before you scan it, you could see in an app that it would where it's going to send you and what it's going to do. So it really solved the problem and yeah, so depending on your opinion about sending traffic to Microsoft, you can you can now they've solved it. Brilliant. Amazing. So now obviously now we're living in a world surrounded by Microsoft tags and and EMF is full of them and we've seen them everywhere obviously and Microsoft tags are incredible because you could design them. They could have I mean horrible designs but you these were all valid Microsoft tags at the time. You could have branding if you wanted your brand to look like awful but you could brand them. How amazing. So here we are 2012. Oh god rocking through this. It's the 60th birthday of the barcode and a company called AC Labels prints the world's longest barcode. Wow. What a time to be alive. I' I'd like to imagine the size of the scanner that you need to scan that. Okay. 2013. Oh, man. This is going well. What? Hold on a minute. Oh, there's a QR code on this. That's why it's on there. Okay. Let's reboot. And um hold on a minute. This August 19th, 2013 for the Microsoft tag service will terminate in 2 years in August. Oh, okay. So, Microsoft killed the tag service. Brilliant. Uh they actually sold it to another company just to keep it on life support, but it it it lasted all of 3 years before they said they were going to kill it. So the the solution to our problem was Microsoft and the solution to that problem was also Microsoft. But so QR codes continue to not be secure, but they're popular now. They're everywhere. So like, okay, fine. Just get on with our lives. So here we are, 2019. Masahiroara enjoys the 25th birthday of the QR code. And here he is with a cake that goes to her page about the about the QR code's birthday. and he can relax knowing that his work has suddenly exploded. His work for labeling car parts has exploded across the world in ways he couldn't expect. And honestly, the QR sorry the QR code finishes at 2019. Nothing nothing important happened after 2019, right? Like this is the end of the talk, right? But oh no, that's 2020. Okay, things happened in 2020. Suddenly we were living in a world of infinite QR codes. suddenly like a thing that was like a novelty that you'd use occasionally was suddenly everywhere using to scan your uh tests and then there were even lots of tests if if you had if you had a bad particularly bad week was Joe here. He had he did have a bad week. Um this is the the biggest QR code I've ever seen. That's why the poster has to be so big because there's an absolutely massive uh gooid in that bar in this barcode with lots of error correction in there. But suddenly we had these everywhere that we had to scan with with uh the NHS app and things like that. Great idea. This is perfect use for a barcode. But suddenly that was the true the true uh pandemic was was QR codes. So here we are 2026. Suddenly there's QR codes everywhere in EMF. Now note on this one. I desperately wanted to get a temporary tattoo of a QR code. And the the the lovely folks at the the the furry embassy uh printed me one until I realized that if you flip a QR code, it doesn't work. So, you have to print it. You have cuz it when it goes on, it's it reverse. So, I was really hoping to do like look at that QR code. So, just imagine there's one on my arm and you like wow, this guy loves QR codes. And but they're everywhere in EMF. They've I think this is the tremendous amount of QR codes everywhere. I've been trying to document them all. Now you'll see you will when you go back into the real world you will see underneath the see QR codes absolutely everywhere now. There's my trustworthy QR code. Don't scan that. So I would I can say with absolute certainty this field is certainly the field with the most QR codes per square meter in the wider Herafordshire region. I haven't I haven't checked the others. So yeah, we can enjoy that Guinness World Record. But now they're everywhere in the real world as well, not just EMF. So since co, we now see them on on bar mats as we scan to to order our uh food. We see them on the side of pint classes that go to a competition about football when we're trying to enjoy a pint of asah. We see them on in Victoria Park. I see them in Victoria Park. Uh just to catalog something. This just has like a number in it. I'm not sure what they use it for. Um I'm very curious though. And that, you know, in this photo alone from Tom, there's four QR codes visible in this picture that go to completely different places. [laughter] There's even the concept of saying there's a QR code but not supplying it, which I which I greatly entertains me. There's a QR code out there. You have to hunt it down like some sort of scavenger hunt. Now, this is my favorite. This is a sign I saw when I was walking through London. Um, we now have our uh paid apps when you're parking. Uh, except this sign has a very specific notice to avoid cushing. Still the worst word ever made because it says this sign does not contain QR codes. So now we have to also specify when something shouldn't contain QR codes. Although someone's enterprising enough to put a QR code on there, they're also enterprising enough to put a long white sticker over that. So um, go well done sign people. In fact, I'm going to go as far as say this slide does not contain QR codes. So actually that's the end of my talk. Um I hope you've really enjoyed it. I wanted to share and leave it on the screen. The best QR code I've seen. This is as I was doing my walking work on this talk. This chap on on Macedon posted this. It is two QR codes in one and depending on how you hold your thumb up you can get the different QR codes. If you use your thumb to cover up one of the squares you will get a different QR code. And I think that's really really impressive. So thank you very much. [applause]