User's Manual

Chapter 6 — Bar Code Symbologies
122 CK60 Series Handheld Computer User’s Manual
Telepen
Telepen was devised by George Sims, Managing Director of SB Electronic
Systems Limited, in early 1972, this is the only symbology to directly repre-
sent the full ASCII character set without shift characters.
Telepen carries the double-density numeric-only mode and is very com-
pact. The Telepen symbol is up to 8 ASCII characters or16 digit per inch,
and is easy to print. It has a fixed 3:1 ratio, with a tolerance at least 0.4x.
This symbology is extremely secure, with negligible risk of misreading. It is
supported by most leading manufacturers.
UPC (Universal Product Code)
The UPC (Universal Product Code) is the symbology used throughout the
grocery and retail industries. This bar code symbology contains two pieces
of numerical information encoded on the bar code, producer identification,
and product identification information.
The UPC symbol is 12 characters long. The first character of the UPC
symbol is a number system character, such as “0” for grocery items and “3”
for drug- and health-related items. This symbology is for retail environ-
ments such as grocery, convenience, and general merchandise stores.
Some retail items are so small that a standard UPC bar code cannot fit on
the packaging. When this occurs there is a shorter version of the UPC sym-
bology, referred to as UPC-E. UPC-E is six characters long (eight including
number system and check digit), about half of a standard UPC bar code.