Behind bars

As a collector of computer-related stamps and postal material I also include stamps with barcodes in my field of interest, simply because barcodes are predominantly read by machines, i.e. computers. Barcodes have featured on stamps since the early eighties but their origin goes back a bit further.

The story started in 1970 when a group of grocers and manufacturers in the retail industry in the United States got together to recommend a uniform method of identifying products in the retail market. By that time a number of companies already had optical codes and scanning equipment in the market place but no uniform standard existed which could be used by grocery manufacturers. The group that came together was called the UGPCC, the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council. They defined a numeric format for the identification of supermarket items, and in 1973 (April 3 is considered its birthdate) the Universal Product Code (UPC) was formally recommended and adopted. With it came the now well-known barcode symbology, which enabled product marking and identification. This development in the United States was followed swiftly in Europe with a similar standard, which was adopted as the European Article Number or EAN. Since then a number of enhancements to these codes have been implemented, resulting in multiple versions of UPC and EAN. There are now at least five versions of UPC and two versions of EAN. The UPC symbols consist in general of 10 digits (the first 5 identify the manufacturer, the last 5 the product). The EAN symbols have 12, 13 or 14 digits: the first 2 or 3 identifying the country, followed by the 5-digit manufacturer’s code, followed by the 5-digit product code, followed by a checkdigit to enable verification of the correctness of the EAN code. A few items, mainly books, magazines and newspapers, follow a slightly different coding system. South Africa’s barcodes, using the EAN-13 system, start with country code 600 and 601, usually followed by a 4-digit manufacturer’s code, followed by a 5-digit product code, followed by a checkdigit. It goes without saying that each unique product has its own unique barcode number.

Barcode numbers are registered with each country’s controlling body. Each manufacturer has to register himself in order to get his own manufacturer’s code, following which the manufacturer allocates and registers the numbers for his own products. In South Africa this controlling body is the South African Numbering Association (SAANA).

Barcode symbols primarily consist of a number of vertical lines of different thickness interspersed with spaces. In the middle and on both ends one finds two lines that are slightly longer than the others. These are the left guard pattern, the center guard pattern and the right guard pattern and are mainly used by the scanning equipment to identify the different elements within the barcode. The vertical height of the barcode is merely a range within which the human hand is expected to travel when it swipes the item over the barcode scanner. During this swipe the scanner registers the flashes of the black and white bars as a binary code (black is 1, white is 0) which is then re-constructed according to the symbology used into a proper product code. In a supermarket environment the scanner passes this product code to the computer, which can simply retrieve the corresponding price of the item, display it at the till, print and add it to the customer’s till slip, reduce the inventory count for that item, etc.

The use of barcodes on most philatelic items falls mainly in one of five categories, with a sixth category for “Others”. Categories 1 to 3 can be found on stamps and impacts the design of the stamp, while categories 2 to 5 can be found on postal stationery.

1.       Barcodes in the design to reflect technology.

Barcode-like pictures have been included in the design of stamps to represent modern technology, in the same way a papertape or punchcard was depicted on stamps in the fifties and sixties to reflect a modern image.

Only a relatively small number of countries have issued stamps that have featured the use of barcodes in this way:
Great Britain (1982-09-08) shows the scanning of a barcoded product in a retail environment. Finland (1984-03-01), Venezuela (1986-12-19), Hong Kong (1990-11-08), USA (1993-07-30), Brazil (1997-03-20), Sweden (1997-08-21), Spain (2000-09-22), Croatia (2002-02-16).

2.       Barcodes to identify certain classes of mail.

Only two countries have issued stamps with barcodes incorporated in the design to assist in the automatic sorting of this type of mail.

Canada issued a Christmas stamp on 1986-10-29 with a most unusual format. The pictorial design of the stamp appeared in the right-hand half of the stamp while the left-hand half of the stamp was blank except for a thick three-line vertical barcode. The stamps were sold in strips of 10 (in a booklet) perforated horizontally and imperforate vertically. These stamps had a lower face value than the normal rates and could only be used in conjunction with special “Greet More” envelopes during the Christmas period. Fifteen Canadian Christmas card manufacturers participated in this venture for Christmas 1986. This was done to encourage Canadians to continue the practice of sending Christmas cards. The stamps were only available during a limited period around Christmas. If found to be used outside the Christmas period, they would be considered to have insufficient postage. Prior to 1986 the Canadian Post Office had experimented with Christmas stamps sold at a discount of 2 cents and supposed to be used only over the Christmas period. However, the public used these stamps also after the Christmas period and there was no method to recognize this mail automatically. The simple solution was to put a barcode on these stamps. The practice of barcoding Christmas stamps was continued till 1995 as in the following year Canada Post stopped issuing reduced-price Christmas stamps. A complete list of Canada’s Christmas stamps featuring barcodes follows.

On 1993-01-19 the Swiss Postal Service issued two stamps with a striking design. Both stamps were printed in special colors: an orange 80c stamp with a single bold letter “A” for first-class (A) mail and a bluish 60c stamp for second-class (B) mail.  The Swiss Post announcement stated: “But the truly innovative feature of the new issues is that they are probably the world’s first [sic] stamps with integrated barcode. Barcoding is being introduced to further improve the efficiency of mechanized sorting. For the time being the system is limited to the two letter-post values so that experience can be gained in the new technology. The code patterns, consisting of a series of coloured bars and spaces of equal size, are printed on the right-hand edge of the stamp. … The code can be read by optical sensors.”

Considering the fact that so few countries have exploited this system of mail identification any further, one is bound to question its success and long-term applicability. Although no other countries have used the technique of incorporating barcodes in the stamp design, a different version of this technology has been applied successfully in the Netherlands since the mid nineties. As a result of the proliferation of home computers amongst the tax paying population, the Netherlands’ Receiver of Revenue has invited its taxpayers to complete their tax returns electronically. For this purpose the taxpayer receives at the end of the tax year a 3.5” stiffy diskette containing the electronic tax return document for that year. Upon completion of the document the stiffy diskette is returned to the Receiver in a pre-addressed blue cardboard envelope with a stiffener inside, supplied specifically for that purpose. The envelope has a pre-printed barcode in the top right-hand corner, which enables the automatic identification and sorting of this mail. The barcode used is of the same type as the Canadian Christmas stamp barcodes, which begs the question: would the Receiver of Revenue consider the taxpayer as its Father Christmas? The envelope also shows a pre-printed postal barcode (see category 5) below the address. Obviously one is allowed to return the electronic tax return document through Internet or e-mail, but taxpayers without an on-line connection have to return the diskette in the blue envelop using conventional snail-mail. The whole package of diskette, return envelope and explanatory booklet is sent annually to the taxpayer in a larger envelope which, as expected, also carries a similar pre-printed barcode in stead of a stamp. This system is still in use today.

3.       Barcodes as product identifier.

This is the normal use of a barcode as we know it. Most philatelic items these days have these barcodes because they, themselves, are the products. These barcodes can be found on postal stationery, stampsheets (usually in the selvedge), etc. and are used for purposes of sales and inventory control. One of the first countries to introduce barcoding for sheets of stamps was New Zealand in 1992. Finland has issued souvenir sheets with a barcode in the margin since 1994. In the following years many countries have introduced a policy of printing an identifying barcode on stampsheets.

In South Africa the first barcoded sheet (of 10 stamps) was the National Lottery issue of 2000-03-02. The next stamp issued was the Family Day issue of 2000-04-05 which, although being a totally different product, received the same barcode as the Lottery stamp (see letter to SA Philatelist, April 2002, page 31). Till now, our Philatelic Services have not come forward with an explanation of this phenomenon.

4.       Barcodes to track a product.

This is a variant of category 3 barcodes mentioned above. Although this type of barcode is also used to identify the product, the identification of the product enables the Post Office to track and trace the postal item to which the barcode is attached. This type of barcode is found on postal items that are registered and/or insured. Any collector who has received registered mail from his local post office is familiar with the barcoded tracker label on the outside. Every time the barcode is scanned, the computer records its existence and the location where the scanning took place till the item is finally handed over to the recipient.

5.       Postal barcodes to enable the sorting of mail.

Present-day sorting machines equipped with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can read machine-printed postal codes and postal barcodes. In this context, a postal barcode is the numerical postal code represented in a more easily machine-readable form. It is printed (usually) as tall and short evenly spaced vertical lines along the bottom face of an envelope. A number of different technologies and formats exist but their explanations go far beyond the scope of this article and they have been dealt with extensively already in existing philatelic literature. Suffice to say that different countries use different systems and that the barcode readers in grocery stores are technologically similar to the barcode readers in the automatic sorting equipment used by modern post offices.

6.       Others.

In defining a classification system one tends to come across at least one item that defies classification, so a sixth category “Others” is justified. In the run-up to the general elections of 1999 in South Africa the voting public was informed that they had to present themselves to the electoral officers with a newly issued barcoded ID-book (the older ID-books did not have a barcode in it). This made the Post Office come up with a fitting promotional slogan. Other countries also have used cancel slogans referring to barcoding for different purposes. Pictorial cancels featuring barcodes exist also. Big Brother has started watching us.

            © Wobbe Vegter 2002

[ Published in: ThemNews, December 2002, Vol. 3, no.5]