Patent ID: 7431212

Claim:
A ruler comprising a front surface and a back surface printed with bar coded information on said front surface, and said back surface to aid in measuring and inputting data electronically with the use of a bar code reader or a mobile computer eguipped with a bar code reader, comprising: on the front surface, graduations marked one inch apart, or marked one centimeter apart in metric applications; said graduations marked seguentially, starting with “1”, and the bar code representing the value “1”, and continuing with “2”, and the bar code representing the value “2”, through “24” and the bar code representing the value of “24”; wherein said front surface of the ruler measures an object's width, or its x-dimension, in inches, or in centimeters in metric applications; on the back surface, imprinted bar code values for length and thickness, or y and z dimensions, of the object; length, or y-dimension, depicting unit of measure in feet, or meters in metric applications, labeled both in human readable form and bar code value; said length, or y-dimension, values marked seguentially, starting with “1”, and the bar code representing the value “1”, through “18”, and the bar code representing the value “18”; thickness, or z-dimension, depicting units in inches, or centimeters in metric applications, labeled in human-readable form and bar code value, and said thickness, or z-dimension, values marked sequentially, starting with “4”, and the bar code representing the value “4”, continuing with “5”, “6”, “8”, “10”, “12” and including all of the bar codes with corresponding values.