Back in I'm going to say about 1985, a company released a bar shaped scanner specifically for loading software from the printed page.
A program would encode a file as a series of encoded bars, roughly 10" x 1", with encoded blocks that look much like a QR Code today.
You would place the device on the bar, and it had a moveable scanner head that would scan the page.
You would do this several times as the files would span several encoded bars. You could easily fit 4 of these bars per 8.5x11 page.
The device was brown, about a foot long, about 2" wide. Motorized, as it moved the scan head vs you dragging it down yourself.
Dr. Dobbs Journal actually used it for several issues, printing the encoded bars next to their program listings.
Alas, in the "Best Of" Dr Dobbs collections that they produced each year, they seem to have removed those encodings, and it seems all reference to it. It seems they also removed all of their advertising, and so this was likely done at the same time.
Just curious if anyone recalled the device, recalled the name. It worked on Macs and PCs (indeed, I got one as a prize at a Mac show).
A program would encode a file as a series of encoded bars, roughly 10" x 1", with encoded blocks that look much like a QR Code today.
You would place the device on the bar, and it had a moveable scanner head that would scan the page.
You would do this several times as the files would span several encoded bars. You could easily fit 4 of these bars per 8.5x11 page.
The device was brown, about a foot long, about 2" wide. Motorized, as it moved the scan head vs you dragging it down yourself.
Dr. Dobbs Journal actually used it for several issues, printing the encoded bars next to their program listings.
Alas, in the "Best Of" Dr Dobbs collections that they produced each year, they seem to have removed those encodings, and it seems all reference to it. It seems they also removed all of their advertising, and so this was likely done at the same time.
Just curious if anyone recalled the device, recalled the name. It worked on Macs and PCs (indeed, I got one as a prize at a Mac show).