When talking about global benchmarks, people use the expression "global standard." A standard means a benchmark. A benchmark is a promise that spans the economy, industry, and technology. While technological advancement can create the need for a "standard," a single standard can also drive a leap of revolutionary scale. Based on a survey of experts from industry, academia, research, and the media, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards and ChosunBiz selected the "top 10 standards that changed the world" and the "top 10 standards that changed the lives and economy of Koreans," and reexamine the role of standards. [Editor's note]
8 a.m. on June 26, 1974. A cheerful "beep" rang out from the checkout counter at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It came after a store employee scanned with a machine a "black stripe" sticker attached to a pack of 10 sticks of gum. When the gum price was entered accurately at the register, applause and cheers broke out from store officials who had been watching in silence. This was the moment when barcodes, now printed more than 5 billion times a day, made their debut.
Barcodes solved shopkeepers' biggest headache of the 1970s in one stroke. Before the invention of the barcode, employees had to add up, one by one, the price tags of items customers brought to the counter. Checkout took too long and errors were frequent. Employees were also said to suffer from tendinitis. In the early 1970s, IBM engineer George Laurer created the vertical stripe barcode used today, based on earlier prototypes.
As barcodes became an international standard, the global distribution industry gained a common language. For example, the Universal Product Code (UPC), an international standard invented in the United States, consists of 12 digits. Each digit contains information about the product and the manufacturer. The barcode serves as something like a resident registration number for goods. Thanks to such barcodes, it became easier to export products made in Korea around the world. In addition, distributors were able to manage inventory more easily, improving profitability.
In the 1990s, when the global economy grew explosively, critics said even barcodes were insufficient to hold product information. In response, Denso Wave, a Japanese auto parts company, released the QR (Quick Response) code in 1994, a two-dimensional barcode that adds horizontal lines. A QR code can hold up to about 7,000 numerals or about 4,200 alphanumeric characters. As QR codes also became an international standard, scanning them with smartphones and tablets allows the same information to be accessed anywhere.
Because QR codes can hold more information than barcodes, they are used much more widely. For example, in 2020, when COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, the Korean government issued QR codes to the public to certify whether they had received a COVID vaccine. Now, scanning a QR code next to an artwork in museums and exhibition halls provides detailed information about the piece in audio or text. Food manufacturers include detailed information in QR codes about what ingredients are in a product and how its nutrients are composed. In restaurants, everything from ordering to payment can be done through a QR code.