Worth Data P11/12 The UPC/EAN checksum character, West 42nd St New York, NY http//web.ansi.org

ISBN specifications are available from:

American National Standards Institute

Customer Service

11 West 42nd St.

New York, NY 10036

http://web.ansi.org

document ISO 2108:1992 $26.00

The UPC/EAN checksum character

The last character in a UPC-A, UPC-E, UPC-E1, EAN-13 or EAN-8 bar code is the checksum. For reference, these are the methods of calculation:

Checksum calculation for UPC-A, EAN-13 and EAN-8

Use Worth Data’s phone number (it's not a real UPC-A code) as sample data:

18314589938

Assign even and odd positions, starting at the right and moving left:

8 3 9 9 8 5 4 1 3 8 1

odd even odd even odd even odd even odd even odd

1.Starting with the leading digit, 8, take the sum of all the characters in the odd positions.

8 + 9 +8 + 4 + 3 + 1 = 33

2. Multiply the result of step 1 by 3.

33 x 3 = 99

3.Now take the sum of all the even-position characters.

3 + 9 + 5 + 1 + 8 = 26

4.Add the result in Step 2 to the result in Step 3.

99 + 26 = 125

5. Subtract the result from the next higher multiple of 10.

Next higher multiple of 10 over 125 = 130

130 - 125 = 5

5 is the Modulo-10 check character. The data to be printed becomes:

183145899385

This same formula is used for EAN-13 (using the 1-12 digits) and EAN-8 (using the 1-7 digits).

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