How we almost ended up with a bull's-eye bar code

Few objects in the world are more immediately recognizable than the bar code. After all, bar codes are all around us. They're on the books we buy and the packages that land on our doorsteps. More than 6 billion bar codes are scanned every single day. They've become such an accepted part of our daily lives that it's hard to imagine how they could look any different.

I've