Never has there been a war movie where a secret message was not encoded and transmitted in beeps, nor has there been a product from a mass merchandiser without a barcode.
I think it will be fun to read on some of the coding systems, my way.
Morse Code
On paper it’s represented as a series of dots and dashes and in harmonic waves it’s a series of short and long beeps. A dot is an “on” element followed by one “off” element and a dash is equivalent to three dot or three “on” elements followed by one “off” element. A dot tone is 100ms and a dash tone is 300ms long.
History
In one line – Samuel Morse created the original but a little different code and was used in electric telegraph in the early 1840s.
Adaptation
I don’t remember the Hollywood movie but there was one instance where the pilot of a high-jacked passenger carrier used light to convey the Morse code to a fighter pilot to not to torpedo them and of having trained armed forces on board. How very convenient.
Now imagine the Bollywood the farce. A smuggler in his out of time Ray-Ban’s standing on a beach and having his men signal a fishing trawler laden with contrabands using a light source which is usually an every day house hold torch. They would simple turn on the off the light without giving it a thought. How very stupid.
Get your own code
Braille
The language of the blind in which is each character is made up of six dots arranged in a matrix of three by two. These dots are numbered 1 to 3, top to bottom on the left and 4 to 6, again top to bottom on the right. This arrangement allows for a total of 26 + 1 (possible combination of raised dots + no raised dot) combinations.
History
Interesting, this was originally developed by Charles Barbier for Napolean’s soldiers to arm them with the skill to communicate secretively in the dark. This system was complex and was rejected by the military. In 1821, he meet up with Louis Braille at the National Institute for the Blind in Paris and the language was refurbished and adopted by the blind.
Adaptation
I don’t know of many Hollywood movies that have used this but in recent time, The Book of Eli, has a brilliant adaptation of this. This Braille twist is the only reason I like the movie.
Bollywood is still ignorant of this but imagine Aamir Khan in Ghajini having short term memory loss and being blind. WOW. I would love to see this.
Get your own code
The ubiquitous Barcode.
There are several versions of the barcode but the one you see more often are the parallel lines of varying thickness. These are referred to as 1D (1 dimensional) barcodes. Then there are also those that come in squares and a few other geometric shapes. These are referred to as 2D (2 dimensional) barcodes.
History
This system has been metamorphosed considerably over time and the only part of the history worth reckoning is that Bernard Silver a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia initiated the research on this system
Get your own code
I used http://www.morovia.com/free-online-barcode-generator/ to render my name in both the Code128 and Data Matrix Barcodes.
It’s beyond my cognition but Nokia provides a built in 2D barcode reader. I used my E71 to verify the generated code. This is the only use I think I will ever have.
