How the QR code was invented

In 1994, bar codes were in widespread use in businesses around the world, but the Japanese car component company, Denso Wave, wanted something quicker.

So they asked one of their engineers, Masahiro Hara, to come up with a solution.

After playing his favourite board game, Go, he came back with an idea.

He designed a black and white square of data that was fast, practical, and could handle more than 200 times the information contained in a barcode.

It was called the Quick Response code, or QR for short. And today it’s used, in some form, by millions of us around the world every day.

Masahiro Hara tells Jane Wilkinson about his pride in his invention.

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(Photo: A QR code connecting to the Witness History episode about... QR codes! Credit: BBC)

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal ; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

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