Who Invented the QR Code? The Story Behind It (1994)
Who invented the QR code? Every day millions of people scan these little squares, but they started on a car-parts factory floor in Japan.
In the early 1990s, parts were tracked with barcodes that held only about 20 characters, so one box needed several labels scanned one at a time. In 1994, at Denso Wave (then part of Denso, a Toyota group company), a two-person team led by Masahiro Hara built a code that held far more and read far faster. Hara has said the game of Go inspired the grid. The hard part was helping a scanner find the code quickly, solved with the 1:1:3:1:1 finder pattern in three corners. Denso Wave held the patent but chose not to enforce it, so anyone could make or read QR codes. Then came the standards (AIM 1997, JIS X 0510 in 1999, ISO/IEC 18004 in 2000), camera phones in Japan from 2002, the iPhone camera in 2017, and the 2020 pandemic habit.
Every day, millions of people scan these little squares, but who actually invented them?
The story starts on a car parts line in Japan.
In the early 1990s, car parts were tracked with ordinary barcodes, but a barcode holds only about 20 characters, so one box could need several labels, each scanned one at a time.
Workers wanted a code that held far more and read fast.
In 1994, at Denso Wave, then part of Denso, a Toyota Group Company, a two-person team led by Masahiro Hara, built one.
Hara has said the game of Go helped inspire it.
Black and white stones on a grid read at a glance.
They called it QR, Quick Response.
The hard part was helping a scanner find the code, fast, at any angle.
So the team studied printed pages, looking for a pattern that almost never appears in print.
They chose a square ring, with widths in the ratio 1 1 3 1 1.
One in three corners and a scanner knows where the code is and which way is up.
The new code held about 7,000 digits and read more than 10 times faster than other codes.
Then Denso Wave made a choice.
It held the patent but said it would not enforce it.
So anyone could make QR codes or build a reader without asking.
The standards followed, AIM in 97, Japan's JIS in 99, and ISO in 2000.
From 2002, phones in Japan shipped with QR readers built in.
Elsewhere, you needed a separate app.
Until 2017, when Apple put a scanner in the iPhone camera, and Android followed.
Then the pandemic from episode 1 made scanning a daily habit.
So, who invented the QR code?
Masahiro Hara and his team at Denso Wave in 1994.
And QR code is still Denso Wave's registered trademark.
30 years on, a code can carry your picture too.
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Thirty years on, a code can carry your picture too.
