Bar none? Mais, non! Bar all.

You may've missed this, but the bar code turned 35 on June 26.

Yup.

I gleaned some cool facts about the bar code from The New York Times:

-- it has 30 black and 29 white bars (how poetic, minimalist, and elegant: who ever thinks of the white bars? Hunh? You just thought the white parts were blank spaces, didn't you? I did.)

-- George J. Laurer, an I.B.M. engineer, led the team that developed the bar code (Laurer, now 84, praises its three great qualities: cheap, needed, and reliable.)

-- It was first used for a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum (67 cents)

-- Bar codes are scanned about 10 billion (with a B) times a day.

-- A committee of reviewers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recommended only one change to the initial design: change the font of the numbers below the bar code.

-- Neither I.B.M. nor its developers patented the bar code. GS 1, a nonprofit, gets a minimal annual fee from manufacturers to cover costs of overseeing the bar code's international standards.

-- UPC stands for Universal Product Code.

-- Bar codes cost a half-cent each.

The New York Times breaks down each component of the UPC is a very informative graphic.

The bar code pictured above is from the front page of The New York Times.