In 1988, while reading a book about UFOs at Xerox PARC, Rob Tow overheard a discussion about embedding barcodes in documents to link them to digital files. He found this idea visually unappealing and instead had an epiphany: he could embed digital data within halftone images in a way that was imperceptible to the human eye.
Tow's idea involved using tiny, angled halftone dots to represent binary data, with left-leaning dots for zeros and right-leaning dots for ones. This method allowed for the embedding of significant amounts of data without affecting the image's appearance. He calculated that this approach could store kilobits of data in a small area, far more than traditional barcodes.
Tow submitted an invention disclosure for this concept and later developed a variant that utilized color and intensity variations below the threshold of human perception. Both ideas were patented. The technology, named "DataGlyph," was developed further with additional features like binary morphology image conditioning and error correction.
The term "DataGlyph" was derived from "Glyph," a term popularized by the musician Prince to denote his identity after a legal dispute. The technology became a real product offered by Xerox under the name "Smart Paper."
Several patents were issued for the DataGlyph technology, including a basic patent (U.S. Patent no. 5,315,098) and others related to adaptive scaling and self-clocking glyph codes.
Tow's idea involved using tiny, angled halftone dots to represent binary data, with left-leaning dots for zeros and right-leaning dots for ones. This method allowed for the embedding of significant amounts of data without affecting the image's appearance. He calculated that this approach could store kilobits of data in a small area, far more than traditional barcodes.
Tow submitted an invention disclosure for this concept and later developed a variant that utilized color and intensity variations below the threshold of human perception. Both ideas were patented. The technology, named "DataGlyph," was developed further with additional features like binary morphology image conditioning and error correction.
The term "DataGlyph" was derived from "Glyph," a term popularized by the musician Prince to denote his identity after a legal dispute. The technology became a real product offered by Xerox under the name "Smart Paper."
Several patents were issued for the DataGlyph technology, including a basic patent (U.S. Patent no. 5,315,098) and others related to adaptive scaling and self-clocking glyph codes.
