From: dmcanzi@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (David Canzi)
Subject: Re: End of the World...
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 06:48:34 GMT

In article <BuJ2n5.Bx7@phage.cshl.org> pjm@cshl.org (Pat Monardo) writes:
>In article <davem.48.716235979@county.lmt.mn.org> davem@county.lmt.mn.org (David Mackmiller) writes:
>>
>>1)  The bar-code inventors or standardizers were atheists who knew how to 
>>party.  I'm sure after a few gin & tonics, they came up with the 666 thing 
>>and wet themselves laughing.
>>
>that is obviously what i would like to know.
>if it is, then it is truly hysterical.

One night, many years ago, a friend and I collected an assortment of
empty pop cans and candy bar wrappers and sat down to examine the bar
codes.  What I'm about to describe is basically what we learned that
night.  (I don't know how clear the following is going to be.  It's
hasrd to describe this without the ability to draw pictures.  It might
be a good idea to have samples of bar codes and a magnifying glass
handy while reading this.)

The following mathematical facts are the basis of the bar code
representation of decimal digits: (1) The number of sequences of four
integers, all greater than 0, which add up to 7, is 20.  (2)  10 of
those sequences are the reversals of the other 10.

A bar code is an alternating sequence of stripes various widths, and
spaces between the stripes, which are also of various widths.  Let the
width of the narrowest possible stripe in a bar code be 1.  A decimal
digit is represented in a bar code by 4 elements, either
(stripe,space,stripe,space) or (space,stripe,space,stripe), whose
widths add up to 7.  The sequence of the widths of these 4 elements
represent the digit.  In some bar codes, the widths of the elements
making up the code for some of the digits is the reversed sequence of
widths for that digit.

The sequences of widths for the elements of the bar codes for the
decimal digits are as follows:

digit	forward		reversed	digit	forward		reversed
-----	-------		--------	-----	-------		--------
0	3,2,1,1		1,1,2,3		5	1,2,3,1		1,3,2,1
1	2,2,2,1		1,2,2,2		6	1,1,1,4		4,1,1,1
2	2,1,2,2		2,2,1,2		7	1,3,1,2		2,1,3,1
3	1,4,1,1		1,1,4,1		8	1,2,1,3		3,1,2,1
4	1,1,3,2		2,3,1,1		9	3,1,1,2		2,1,1,3

Each digit code either starts or ends with a space.  In the most common
type of bar code, the digits in the left half start with a space, and
the digits in the right half start with a stripe.  The representation
of a digit in one half of the bar code is a photographic negative of
the representation of that same digit in the other half of the bar
code, where a space in one is converted to a stripe in the other and
vice versa.  So, the leading space or trailing space is part of the
code for a digit.

This is where the people who see the Mark of the Beast on their candy
bar wrappers go wrong.  They treat that leading or trailing space not
as part of the code but as a space *between* codes.  The representation
of 6 in the right half of the most common kind of bar code is two
narrow stripes separated by a narrow space and followed by a very wide
(ie. 4 times the width of the narrow stripes) space.  The doomsday
people do not count the wide space as part of the code for 6, and so
they convince themselves that the "guard bars" in the beginning,
middle, and end of the bar codes are sixes.

I don't think that the bar code is the mark of the beast, and I don't
think that the resemblance of the guard bars to part of the code for 6
indicates that the bar code designers were perpetrating a practical
joke.  Part of the code for 6 resembles the guard bars.  That code
*had* to be assigned to *some* digit.  If the codes were assigned to
the digits arbitrarily, the probability of that particular code being
assigned to the digit 6 is 1 in 10.  Coincidences with a probability of
1 in 10 are too commonplace to justify the conclusion that the
designers of the bar code were pulling a practical joke, much less to
justify predictions of the end of world.

-- 
David Canzi
Newsgroups: alt.atheism