Started following a blog about old barcode scanning tech from 1992

I ended up on some guy's personal page last week who collects and restores old grocery store barcode scanners from the early 90s. He had a post about the NCR 7870 model that weighed like 35 pounds and cost stores $4,000 back then. The wild part was he included a recording of the beep it makes when it scans. Something about seeing how far we've come with technology just sitting in that corner of the internet felt special. Has anyone else found a blog that's weirdly specific like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

karen2751mo ago

Man, I really gotta disagree with you here @richard_roberts80. I actually think those old clunky scanners were way more interesting than the quiet digital ones we have now. The mechanical beep tells a story, you know? It's proof that something real is happening inside that box. I get tired of everything being so silent and smooth these days, like the tech is trying to hide how it works. That 35 pound behemoth was honest about its job, and that's worth something.

richard_roberts801mo ago

I actually listened to a radio segment on NPR a few months back about a guy who still runs a 1980s-era grocery store scanner system for fun. He said the old ones had this loud, almost mechanical beep because the lasers were physically moving parts back then, not like today's silent digital stuff. It's wild to think that 35-pound brick was cutting edge tech for scanning a pack of gum. What kind of stuff does that NCR 7870 blog post say about how stores actually used those things day to day?