# mark of the beast microchip -- when was it invented? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 29, 2009, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998 "2009-05-29T04:34:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TaterRecon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f14d63/32.png) [@TaterRecon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TaterRecon)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/41 "2009-05-30T02:40:29Z")
I have researched the bars in a barcode and I can see what some may be calling the mark. I’m not saying it is _correct_. I think the reason why it fits is because of the verse which surrounds the idea, which goes like this: [QUOTE=Rev. 13:16-18] And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: **And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the MARK** , or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/42 "2009-05-30T03:19:33Z")
For the World is Hollow and I’ve touched the Sky. A computer (worshiped as a divine entity called the Oracle) controls the inhabitants of a spaceship via a chip inserted in their temple. The ship is set up to resemble a planet and the inhabitants are not allowed to know they are on a journey to a new home world. [Star Trek episode 63](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_World_is_Hollow_and_I_Have_Touched_the_Sky), season 3, November 8, 1968. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/43 "2009-05-30T05:09:57Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I-666 = The Controlled-Access Divided Highway to Hell There used to be a [US666](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_666#U.S._Route_666) but they changed it to US491 after the signs kept getting stolen. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/44 "2009-05-30T05:55:10Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > There used to be a [US666](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_666#U.S._Route_666) but they changed it to US491 after the signs kept getting stolen. There is a Rt666 in Ohio and the last time I drove on it was after a heavy rain. It had washed out the shoulder in places to the point where the guard rail posts were hanging in mid-air. It certainly looked like the road from Hell that day. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/45 "2009-05-30T09:35:32Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > **Musicat** - are you saying you can’t even see what the 666-barcode nutcases are pointing at? > > I know they’re wrong, but can you see what they’re claiming to see? I can see that if you try hard enough to remain ignorant, and try hard enough to fit your expectations into something wholy imaginary, you can see the devil in anything, even a tortilla in Mexico or smoke from a fire. Me…I see bunnyrabbits in clouds. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/46 "2009-05-30T15:11:15Z")
Maybe the UK barcodes are different (and more overtly evil). [Here](http://sscc18.co.uk/images/ean-pack-barcode.gif) is what ours look like. 6 numbers on the left, 6 on the right and 6 dividers. Note that it works also for the new mark of the beast, 616. One digit on its own followed by 6 followed by 6. Then, all we need is to further speculate that Satan is dyslexic, and voila! 616! ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/47 "2009-05-30T15:43:47Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Ahem. As someone who wrote software to print and decode over 9 different barcodes years ago, which makes me an expert, at least in an historic sense, let me say that you cannot “guess” the meaning of the bars in many cases without knowing the underlying code structure. Hmmm.. **Musicat** == [:CueCat](http://cuecat.com/) ?? ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/48 "2009-05-30T15:45:48Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > I’ve heard the reason America doesn’t have a National I.D. card system is because too many fundies would assume it’s the mark of the beast and refuse to carry one. All the more reason to implement the system, then. Perhaps we can set deportation as the penalty for non-compliance? Off-planet, if possible? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/49 "2009-05-30T16:04:14Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Huh? > > The way I heard it, it simply goes: > > “Six digits on the left side. Six digits on the right side. And six delimiter lines. Ergo 666”. > > And the first barcode I’ve looked at supports this highly scientific hypothesis, looking like this (I can’t get the formatting / whitespace right but you get the idea): > > ``` > |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| > |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| > > ``` > > 5 || 017239 || 194801 || \> Well, it’s a relatively reasonable explanation, but how do you account for the Single Digit Positive Integer Check Digit of The Beast? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/50 "2009-05-30T17:08:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Maybe the UK barcodes are different (and more overtly evil). > > [Here](http://sscc18.co.uk/images/ean-pack-barcode.gif) is what ours look like. 6 numbers on the left, 6 on the right and 6 dividers. Codes may have changed over the last 20 years, but there was a UPC for the US and an EAN code for the EU, with some similarities and some differences. There also is a UPC-E code, a shortened version designed for small items like gum where the available scanning area is limited. And there are others… > [@Projammer](#): > > Hmmm.. Musicat == :CueCat ?? Good guess, and I did mess around the the Cuecat as a hacker/consumer, but I was not a developer. I invented/programmed, along with two friends, a S-100 computer board that used a HP wand and was able to read 7 different kinds of bar codes (and automatically distinguish them); could return a graphic string for any code and digits requested, suitable for printing; and even had an onboard realtime clock and stopwatch (pretty advanced for 8080 days). The board did so much, we called it the _Bartender_. Heh. ---
**Author:** ![MeDrewNotYou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@MeDrewNotYou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeDrewNotYou)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/51 "2009-05-30T20:34:35Z")
If I may add a non-factual anecdote about how ‘the system’ _could_ be set up… My mom used to run in the (to be charitable) crazy Christian crowd, so I asked her about this. She told to me that (as mentioned upthread) “BEAST” was a giant supercomputer based in Belgium and that satellites monitored people and fed the information back to the computer. What caught me for a loop, however, was that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched not to get really cool and valuable images, but to be better able to spy on us erstwhile sheeple. The images are all simulated one way or another, like the folks at [Fixed Earth](http://www.fixedearth.com/) seem to think. I started laughing and she assured me of her thorough embarrassment at even _knowing_ about this, much less being friendly with actual believers. I had to promise not to rib her about this. If she weren’t my mother, though, I’d introduce her as the woman who thinks that Hubble is spying on us for the satanic Belgians. (Not that I think she ever bought the crazier BS, to her credit.) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/52 "2009-05-30T22:12:41Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > I can see that if you try hard enough to remain ignorant, and try hard enough to fit your expectations into something wholy imaginary, you can see the devil in anything, even a tortilla in Mexico or smoke from a fire. > > Me…I see bunnyrabbits in clouds. I don’t think that’s an entirely apt comparison. They’re seeing two narrow bars, repeated at the start, middle and end of the barcode. They’re seeing that a very similarly-spaced and proportioned pair of narrow bars also represents the number 6 within the barcode. Unlike bunnies in clouds, what they’re seeing _is actually there_. It’s just their interpretation of it that is incorrect, but that’s a mistake anyone could make, even without a religious agenda, because the guard bars really do look like (one version of) the coding for the number 6, to the untrained eye. It certainly is not wholly imaginary. ---
**Author:** ![TaterRecon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f14d63/32.png) [@TaterRecon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TaterRecon)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/53 "2009-05-30T22:27:00Z")
Perhaps he really \*does \*see bunnyrabbits in teh clouds. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/54 "2009-05-30T23:46:15Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > They’re seeing two narrow bars, repeated at the start, middle and end of the barcode. > > They’re seeing that a very similarly-spaced and proportioned pair of narrow bars also represents the number 6 within the barcode. Very wrong, very wrong. The number 6 is not represented by two thin bars. And that’s where the problem of interpretation lies. Each UPC character consists of 7 elements. There are two bars and two spaces. Each bar and each space is of a width from 1 to 4 elements. You can think of a “6” as element widths 1-1-1-4. This translates to: (left side of label): space of width 1, bar of width 1, space of width 1, bar of width 4 (right side of label): bar of width 1, space of width 1, bar of width 1, space of width 4 So, although a “6” includes, in the left side only, 2 thin bars, the 2 thin bars do not make up the symbol for a “6”, but only half of the symbol. The spaces have equal significance to the bars. In the right side, the bars and spaces are reversed. Note that, since this code is continuous, the characters run together, and without careful analysis and knowledge of the structure, it’s hard to know where one character ends and the next begins. For example, on the left side of a label that has the sequential characters “…16…”, the right thin bar of the “1” is close to the left thin bar of the “6” and may look like two thin bars, just like the two thin bars of the right-side “6”, but _they are parts of different characters._ [Perhaps this site will help.](http://www.virtualsalt.com/barcode.htm) I see two narrow bars in a Twix candy wrapper. Does that represent a “6”? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2009, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/55 "2009-05-31T00:00:49Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Very wrong, very wrong. The number 6 is not represented by two thin bars. And that’s where the problem of interpretation lies. Yes, but it IS a problem of misinterpretation, not wilful ignorance. > [@](#): > > Each UPC character consists of 7 elements. There are two bars and two spaces. Each bar and each space is of a width from 1 to 4 elements. You can think of a “6” as element widths 1-1-1-4. This translates to: > > (left side of label): space of width 1, bar of width 1, space of width 1, bar of width 4 I know. But to the untrained eye, the significance of the whitespace is easy to overlook. > [@](#): > > (right side of label): bar of width 1, space of width 1, bar of width 1, space of width 4 > > So, although a “6” includes, in the left side only, 2 thin bars, the 2 thin bars do not make up the symbol for a “6”, but only half of the symbol. The spaces have equal significance to the bars. In the right side, the bars and spaces are reversed. As acknowledged in posts #52 and #40. > [@](#): > > Note that, since this code is continuous, the characters run together, and without careful analysis and knowledge of the structure, it’s hard to know where one character ends and the next begins. For example, on the left side of a label that has the sequential characters “…16…”, the right thin bar of the “1” is close to the left thin bar of the “6” and may look like two thin bars, just like the two thin bars of the right-side “6”, but _they are parts of different characters._ > > [Perhaps this site will help.](http://www.virtualsalt.com/barcode.htm) > > I see two narrow bars in a Twix candy wrapper. Does that represent a “6”? I don’t think we disagree at all about barcode symbology (which I do believe I understand a little better, perhaps, than you give me credit). Where we disagree is on the notion that this misunderstanding of the meaning of the guard bars is necessarily the result of wilful ignorance (if that is indeed your opinion). I think it’s a fairly understandable mistake that - as I say - could also be made by someone without an agenda. ---
**Author:** ![tigercat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ad7895/32.png) [@tigercat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tigercat)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/56 "2009-06-02T19:45:44Z")
I am 54 years old and I believe I first started hearing this in church when I was between 12-14 years old. I am pretty sure our pasture said a computer chip would be implanted in our hand or forehead. ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_Astronaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bad\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/57 "2009-06-02T20:18:04Z")
> [@tigercat](#): > > I am 54 years old and I believe I first started hearing this in church when I was between 12-14 years old. I am pretty sure our pasture said a computer chip would be implanted in our hand or forehead. That would make your pastor a remarkably prescient fellow. According to wikipedia at the end of the '60s microchips were just starting to appear in consumer devices - they would have been seen as an obscure television component. The idea that there would be any purpose to implanting one in the skin would have been bizarre. > [@goemon](#): > > …i don’t know if i can trust this interpretation to be true, so to give me a hint as to it’s accuracy… hint: not accurate ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/58 "2009-06-02T20:25:24Z")
> [@tigercat](#): > > I am 54 years old and I believe I first started hearing this in church when I was between 12-14 years old. I am pretty sure our pasture said a computer chip would be implanted in our hand or forehead. You had a talking pasture? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/59 "2009-06-02T20:57:27Z")
> [@MeDrewNotYou](#): > > If I may add a non-factual anecdote about how ‘the system’ _could_ be set up… > > My mom used to run in the (to be charitable) crazy Christian crowd, so I asked her about this. She told to me that (as mentioned upthread) “BEAST” was a giant supercomputer based in Belgium and that satellites monitored people and fed the information back to the computer. What caught me for a loop, however, was that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched not to get really cool and valuable images, but to be better able to spy on us erstwhile sheeple. You do realize that the Russians actually had a [manned telescope](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz) to spy on us? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998/60 "2009-06-02T21:26:51Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You had a talking pasture? Clearly, outstanding in its field. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-of-the-beast-microchip-when-was-it-invented/497998.md?page=4)