Pitney Bowes Corp created the Codabar barcode in 1972 for use on forms used in the logistics and healthcare industries. It is a discrete, self-checking, symbology that may encode up to 16 different characters with an additional 4 start/stop characters. The symbology was designed to be able to be read when printed from dot matrix printers for multi-part forms. Variants of Codabar include Codeabar, Ames Code, NW-7, Monarch, Code 2 of 7, Rationalized Codabar, ANSI/AIM BC3-1995 or USD-4.
Codabar is used today by U.S. blood banks, FedEx, photo labs and libraries. Although newer barcode types allow for more information to be stored in a smaller space, Codabar has benefits for various industries due to the ease of printing. Codabar barcodes can be printed using any impact style printer, such as a typewriter, and creation of large numbers of codes can be produced using consecutive numbers without the use of a computer.
In addition to many other symbologies, the Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK supports camera-based Codabar barcode scanning on iOS or Android through smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. You can download a copy of our SDK and start scanning Codabar barcodes today by signing up for an enterprise trial account.
