By Megan Poljacik
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08 Apr, 2024
It’s 2021, with the world still grappling with the pandemic, and you are headed out to a restaurant. Instead of receiving a physical menu, the waitress guides you to a square filled with small squares positioned randomly. She instructs you to open your camera app and focus on the square. Following her directions, a link appears as you scan the square. By clicking on the link, your browser opens, and the menu materializes. How did scanning a mere square bring you here? QR codes, short for Quick Response codes, were first developed in 1994 by a Japanese company called Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota. For many years, factories were using linear based barcodes to track automobile parts during the manufacturing process. Barcodes were limited to just 20 characters and often there would be multiple barcodes on one product. Denso Wave wanted something more efficient. An engineer at Denso Wave named Masahiro Hara began brainstorming a better way to track parts and information. Surprisingly he got his idea from an ancient Chinese board game called Go. Played on a 19x19 grid, black and white game pieces are added until no more moves can be made and the player with the most territory covered wins.