The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I was drawn in the sand on a beach, as Morse code pulled downwards.
The idea then sat unused for twenty years, because the technology to read me did not exist.
The first thing ever scanned was a packet of chewing gum, in Ohio, in 1974.
I do not contain the price. I only contain a number.
The stripes on everything you buy.
Barcode
Joseph Woodland dragged his fingers through beach sand in 1949 and saw Morse dots and dashes stretched into lines. Lasers and computers took another twenty-five years to catch up with him.
Joseph Woodland was sitting on a Florida beach in 1949 thinking about Morse code when he drew dots and dashes in the sand and pulled his fingers downward, turning them into lines. He patented it, and then nothing happened for two decades, because reading it required a cheap laser and a computer, and neither existed. A committee settled the modern standard in the early seventies, and the first live scan was a packet of Wrigley's gum in Troy, Ohio, in June 1974. The code itself holds only an identifying number; the price lives in the shop's database.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #56 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #55. Next: mystery #57. Or try #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20.