In 1948, graduate students, Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver1 took on a problem that had troubled retailers for years: how to keep track of store inventories. Inspired by the dots and dashes of Morse code, however2 Woodland and Silver created a system of lines that could encode data. Called a symbology, the pattern created by the spacing and widths of the lines encodes information by representing different characters. The first bar code was composed of four white lines set at specific distances from each other3 on a black background. The first line was always present.4 Depending on the presence or absence of the remaining three lines, up to seven different arrangements were possible5 and, therefore, seven different encodings. Today, twenty-nine white lines make6 more than half a billion encodings possible. To create a bar code scanner, Woodland and Silver adapted technology from an optical movie sound system. Their prototype scanner used a 500-watt bulb, a photomultiplier tube (a device that detects light), and an oscilloscope (a device that translates electronic signals into readable information). Although successful, the contraption7 was both large and costly. However,8 progress stalled until the 1970s, when laser technology (both more compact and less expensive) became available. In today's scanners, a laser sends light back and forth across a bar code. While the black lines absorb the light, the white lines reflect it9 back at a fixed mirror inside the scanner. 10Since11 there are one- and two-dimensional bar codes using numeric and alphanumeric symbologies, bar codes are used not only for a pack of gum or an airline ticket, but also for research. In one study, for instance, tiny bar codes were placed on bees to track12 their activities. Bar codes have almost certainly exceeded even Woodland and Silver's expectations.13
Artistry in Basketry
The largest Indian art festival in the nation40 show. The creator of the piece, thirty-three-year-old Passamaquoddy Indian Jeremy Frey from Princeton, Maine, the basket sold at auction for $16,000. Frey describes his baskets as 'cutting-edge traditional.' He primarily weaves a classic material, wood from the brown ash tree, but, unlike most contemporary basketmakers, he harvests, cuts, pounds, dries, and dyes the wood himself. Then creating highly elaborate versions of the sturdy utility baskets that have been used by generations of Passamaquoddy fishermen from Maine. He honors tradition, but he highlights complex weaving on areas that are often hidden and therefore typically not embellished. Many traditional baskets have basic, woven lids. Frey's porcupine quill lids are often decorated with art inlaid on birch bark; as far as lids go, I wouldn't say that's basic. And while braids of grass are customarily woven into ash baskets to make them better, Frey incorporates braided cedar bark to create striking new textures. Now that he's a nationally recognized artist who has rejuvenated the art of basketry, Frey feels his role is to inspire. He's on the board of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, a group that works to help preserve it by reaching out to young members of Native communities in the state. His other goal is to continue to stand out. The woven grass bracelets he saw on a recent trip to Hawaii have influenced how he shapes the bases of some of his newer baskets, as he finds yet another way to make traditional Passamaquoddy weaving something spectacularly his own.