Article: From Orwellian to ubiquitous: Happy birthday, dear bar codes; The gadget that's moved us from the "plunk plunk" of cash registers to the "beep beep" of scanners turns 25 Saturday.(NEWS)

1/3 Fran Alagna and Sally O'Reilly both remember when supermarket clerks scanned groceries with their eyes, not with lasers, and when they punched prices by hand into a cash register.

O'Reilly, a shopper, sort of misses the cash register.

"It's like the sound of a typewriter," she said. "My mother still has an old Olivetti, and I like to hear her plunk away at it."

But when cash registers ruled at Lunds, Alagna - a clerk for 31 years - often did the plunking.

"I wouldn't go back," she said. "The scanner is second nature now. I think most customers have adjusted to it, too."

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