Companies are implanting bar code scanners in pens, key fobs, cell phones and pagers.

FORBES: Scanned Goods

These hardware upstarts include Airespace, Colubris Networks and Trapeze Networks, as well as Aruba Wireless Networks, which runs most of Dartmouth's campus, and Symbol Technologies, a publicly traded company known for its bar code scanners.

FORBES: Wi-Fi With a Coat and Tie

He later became president of a Litton Industries unit called Intermec, a maker of bar-code scanners.

FORBES: The Killer Ad Machine

It pioneered the use of bar-code scanners, slick supply chains and inventory management tweaked to local purchasing preferences.

FORBES: Yin Yang, Big Bang

The other pieces enterprise products like two-way radios for public safety agencies and bar-code scanners became Motorola Solutions, with Brown at the helm.

FORBES: The Other Motorola

In addition, they depend on an array of specialty devices, such as audio book-readers, color readers, navigation tools, raised Braille labels, special bar-code scanners, and large-buttoned, voice-enabled MP3 players which are prohibitively expensive.

ENGADGET: Qualcomm develops eyes-free smartphone for the blind and visually impaired, calls it Ray