Barcodes:
Do you know how it really works?

Transgenic Designations

In this article, we will take an in-depth look, first into how standard commercial barcodes work, secondly, how numerical Manticore barcodes work, and lastly, how the visual Manticore barcode is created.
Commercial Barcodes
The UPC (Universal Product Code) barcode is the standard barcode format used in stores to identify products and their price. How does a UPC barcode work? First, a 12-digit number is generated. The first six digits are a manufacturer's identification number, the next five digits are the product's identification number, and the final number is called a check digit. For example, a UPC barcode would be broken apart like this: 639382 00039 3

The first two numbers are self-explanatory, so I'll only explain the check digit. The check digit is used to determine that the barcode was scanned correctly. It does that by the following process. First, the computer adds together the value of all the digits in odd positions:

6 + 9 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 32

Then it multiplies that number by 3:

32 * 3 = 96

Then it adds together the value of all the digits in even positions:

3 + 3 + 2 + 0 + 3 = 11

After that, it adds this sum to the value in step 2:

96 + 11 = 107

Then it adds the check digit to that result. If, after doing so, it is a multiple of 10, then the barcode is correct:

107 + 3 = 110

Once that number is formed, a visual representation of it is created with bars and spaces of various widths and in different positions. In a UPC barcode, four bars (actually, two bars and two spaces) make up one digit of the barcode number. Look at any barcode on the back of a book or a box of food. There are four widths of bars. We'll call them 1, 2, 3, and 4 - 1 being the thinnest. Also note that the barcode begins and ends with 1-1-1, so skip those if you want to try decoding it. Below is the key for decoding the barcode:
0 = 3-2-1-1
1 = 2-2-2-1
2 = 2-1-2-2
3 = 1-4-1-1
4 = 1-1-3-2
5 = 1-2-3-1
6 = 1-1-1-4
7 = 1-3-1-2
8 = 1-2-1-3
9 = 3-1-1-2

You may notice that if you add the bars together (3 + 2 + 1 + 1, for example), you will always get 7. This is so every barcode will always be the same width - if each digit was not the same width, some barcodes would be much wider than others - not good. So now you understand how a barcode works - in theory, anyway.

Numerical Manticore Barcodes

The numerical Manticore barcode is of a similar formation as a UPC barcode, but the segments of the number have a different meaning. Using Max's barcode as an example, we can see that it breaks apart as follows:

33 2 960073 452

Let's examine each segment in part:

33

The first two digits of the barcode number tell the soldier's series and class - in this case, X5. How on earth does 33 become X5, you ask? It's a very bizarre method. If you take each character of X5, X and 5, and take the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code for both characters, which are, in this case, 58 for X and 35 for 5. Then you take the first number and multiply it by the second number, which gives you 2030, which you then divide by 60. Bingo. The result is... 33.

2

The production year of the soldier. 0 is year 1, 1 is year 2, 2 is year 3, and so on. We know that Max is 19 in 2019, meaning she was born in 2000, which makes 1997 year 0 of X5 production.

960073

Reference number. Some hypothesize that it contains the information on what DNA is used in the soldier, but more likely, it points to a file on a computer somewhere that contains all the information on the soldier.

452
The soldier's individual designation. This is necessary because more than one soldier could have the same first 9 digits of a barcode if they were genetically identical. Selection of this number would logically be sequential, but does not appear to be, as older X5s sometimes have higher numbers than younger. Number is used in conjunction with their class as a shortened identification (e.g. X5-452).

Visual Manticore Barcodes

Where a UPC barcode uses four bars for each digit - or, more accurately, two bars and two spaces - Manticore barcodes used in Dark Angel use... two bars. There's a reason for using four bars. As we learned in Section 1, adding the numbers represented by a combination of four bars always results in the sum of 7. There aren't enough possible combinations with only two bars to accomplish that same goal, and so, if we followed the rules used on the show, every barcode would be a different width. In addition to that, every X5 barcodes should start with the same four bars, since the first two characters are the same - but they don't. The visual Manticore barcodes are complete gibberish, and have no correlation with the numbers.

In conclusion, it appears that, while they spent a lot of time planning how the barcode numbers worked and what they meant, they didn't really spend any time at all on the real barcode. Shame.
Transgenic Designations