Digital Technology | The Invention of the QR Code? | Barcode Scanner | The Dr. Binocs Show — Transcript

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1. 0:04[Music]
2. 0:09Yummy. That will be just 100 rupees
3. 0:13only. Oh no, I don't have any cash on
4. 0:17me. No problem, sir. Just scan this QR
5. 0:22code. Quick and
6. 0:24easy. Wa, that's amazing.
7. 0:29You are good. What's that?
8. 0:34Ah, it's an invention that has changed
9. 0:37the
10. 0:38world. So, let me take you back to where
11. 0:41it all started by narrating the
12. 0:45invention of the QR code. Zoom in.
13. 0:50Once upon a time, long before
14. 0:54smartphones, wireless payments, or Tik
15. 0:57Tok, there lived a man named Samuel
16. 1:01Moss. In
17. 1:031825, Moss was a painter, not a tech
18. 1:07wizard. But everything changed. While
19. 1:11painting a portrait in Washington, DC,
20. 1:14he received a tragic letter. His wife
21. 1:17had died during childbirth. Devastated
22. 1:21and heartbroken, Moss raced home by
23. 1:25horse and carriage only to arrive days
24. 1:29too late. This pain sparked a mission.
25. 1:33He would find a faster way for people to
26. 1:36communicate across distances. The
27. 1:39result, Mosqu, a clever system of dots
28. 1:44and dashes that let people send messages
29. 1:48using telegraph wires. Fast forward a
30. 1:52century in
31. 1:541948, Norman Joseph Woodland, a bright
32. 1:58engineering student and former boy scout
33. 2:02who knew Moscow, was relaxing on a
34. 2:06beach. He had just heard about a new
35. 2:09challenge from a grocery store owner. We
36. 2:13need a faster way to check out items at
37. 2:16the store. As Woodland dragged his
38. 2:20fingers through the sand, he began to
39. 2:23sketch dots and dashes. And then just
40. 2:27like that, he had a ureka moment. What
41. 2:30if Moscow was stretched vertically into
42. 2:34lines? That idea eventually became the
43. 2:39barcode, the stripped code you see on
44. 2:43every product at the
45. 2:45supermarket. Barcodes
46. 2:48revolutionized shopping, but they had
47. 2:51limits. They could only store a small
48. 2:54amount of information and had to be
49. 2:57scanned in a very specific way. As the
50. 3:01world grew more digital, something
51. 3:03better was needed.
52. 3:05Enter 1994 Japan. A quiet engineer named
53. 3:11Masahiro Har was working at a car parts
54. 3:15company called Denzo Wave. His job
55. 3:19helped factories track car components
56. 3:22faster and more
57. 3:25accurately. Workers were constantly
58. 3:27scanning multiple barcodes per part and
59. 3:31it was slowing everything down. Hara
60. 3:35decided to dream bigger. He imagined a
61. 3:39new kind of code, one that could hold
62. 3:42much more data, scan in any direction,
63. 3:45and be read in a flash. Inspired by the
64. 3:49ancient Japanese board named Go with its
65. 3:53black and white pieces on a grid, Hara
66. 3:56and his team designed the world's first
67. 3:59QR code, short for quick response code.
68. 4:04They made it public, meaning anyone
69. 4:06could use it for
70. 4:09free. At first, QR codes were used in
71. 4:12warehouses and factories. But then
72. 4:16something incredible
73. 4:18happened. As smartphones became common,
74. 4:22suddenly everyone had a QR code scanner
75. 4:25in their pocket. By 2017, phone cameras
76. 4:30could read QR codes directly.
77. 4:33No app
78. 4:35needed. Then came the coid9 pandemic.
79. 4:39Overnight, QR codes exploded in
80. 4:42popularity. Contactless menus, digital
81. 4:46check-ins, mobile payments. In places
82. 4:50like India and China, people now make
83. 4:54billions of payments using QR codes
84. 4:57every month. From street food stalls to
85. 5:01high-end stores, just can and go. Today,
86. 5:06those little square patterns are
87. 5:09everywhere. From receipts to restaurant
88. 5:12tables to school IDs. They may look
89. 5:15simple, but each QR code packs a smart
90. 5:20blend of math and design that keeps our
91. 5:23world connected. So the next time you
92. 5:26scan one, remember you're tapping into a
93. 5:30legacy sparked by a painter, a beach,
94. 5:34and a brilliant idea. Trivia time. Did
95. 5:39you know that compared to traditional
96. 5:42barcodes, a single QR code can store up
97. 5:46to
98. 5:484,296 alpha numeric characters?
99. 5:52Yes, that's over 200 times more than the
100. 5:5720 character capacity of a regular
101. 6:01barcode. It's sketching time. Today's
102. 6:05sketch of the day goes to Nak
103. 6:10Sharma. Hope you scanned something new
104. 6:13today. Until next time, it's me, Dr.
105. 6:17Box, zooming out. Could you decide to
106. 6:26never mind?