Patent Document ID: 4602152
Application ID: 06497637

Base Claim:
1. A bar code information source for providing coded data comprising: a support material providing a surface on which coded data is to be disposed; bar code means disposed on the surface of said support material and defining a plurality of data bar spaces adapted to provide bar code data to be retrieved, said plurality of data bar spaces differing in appearance as between dark and light regions and in width dependent upon the information content represented thereby; said plurality of data bar spaces being arranged in a plurality of respective multibit binary words of bar code, each word having a predetermined number of bits of data; each respective multibit binary word as provided by said plurality of data bar spaces being defined by a plurality of multibit binary partial words including a first partial word having a first preselected number of the most significant bits of data and representative of a first numerical value and at least another partial word having a second preselected number of the least significant bits of data and representative of another numerical value; and the numerical values represented by said plurality of partial words defining a respective multibit binary word upon being combined being representative of a decoded version of the corresponding multibit binary word having a plurality of bits reduced in number as compared to said predetermined number of bits of data constituting the respective word of bar code.

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Claim 2:
2. A bar code information source as set forth in claim 1, wherein said data bar spaces comprise first bar spaces of relatively narrow width and second bar spaces of relatively wide width as compared to said first bar spaces of relatively narrow width; said first bar spaces being representative of one binary value, and said second bar spaces being representative of the other binary value; and said first bar spaces substantially predominating in number as compared to said second bar spaces.