QR Codes Were Invented to Track Car Parts

Today, QR codes are everywhere. From menus, tickets, ads, and even tombstones. But when they were first created in 1994, they had nothing to do with marketing or smartphones.

A small team at Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota, developed the QR (Quick Response) code to help track car parts during manufacturing. Standard barcodes could only store a small amount of information and had to be scanned at a specific angle. QR codes, on the other hand, could hold far more data and be scanned from any direction, saving precious time on the assembly line.

The design itself was inspired by the black-and-white squares of the Japanese board game Go, chosen for its easy-to-read contrast and ability to hold complex patterns. By the early 2000s, the tech spread beyond factories, finding uses in logistics, ticketing, and eventually consumer marketing.

Fast forward to today, and QR codes are part of our everyday lives, bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds in seconds. What started as a quiet automotive tool has become one of the most universal symbols of our connected era.