But Mr. Woodland, convinced that a solution was close at hand, quit graduate school to devote himself to the problem. He holed up at his grandparents’ home in Miami Beach, where he spent the winter of 1948-49 in a chair in the sand, thinking.

　　但是，伍德蘭先生確信解決方案就近在咫尺，毅然退學(xué)專心攻克這一難關(guān)。1948到1949年的那個(gè)冬天他寄居在邁阿密海灘的祖父母家，一人坐在沙灘的椅子上冥思苦想。

　　To represent information visually, he realized, he would need a code. The only code he knew was the one he had learned in the Boy Scouts.

　　他意識(shí)到，要想將信息視覺化，必須進(jìn)行編碼，而他只知道當(dāng)童子軍時(shí)學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)的編碼。

　　What would happen, Mr. Woodland wondered one day, if Morse code, with its elegant simplicity and limitless combinatorial potential, were adapted graphically? He began trailing his fingers idly through the sand.

　　有一天，伍德蘭先生突然想到，摩斯密碼簡(jiǎn)便優(yōu)雅，還可以進(jìn)行無(wú)限組合，如果將這種密碼平面化處理會(huì)怎么樣呢?于是，他開始用手指不經(jīng)意地在沙灘上劃來(lái)劃去。

　　“What I’m going to tell you sounds like a fairy tale,” Mr. Woodland told Smithsonian magazine in 1999. “I poked my four fingers into the sand and for whatever reason — I didn’t know — I pulled my hand toward me and drew four lines. Now I have four lines, and they could be wide lines and narrow lines instead of dots and dashes.’ ”

　　1999年在接受《史密森尼(Smithsonian)》雜志采訪時(shí)伍德蘭先生說(shuō)，“這聽起來(lái)非常不可思議，我將四個(gè)手指插入沙中，然后莫名地將手向后拉，隨手畫出了四條線，寬窄不一，不再是由點(diǎn)和破折號(hào)構(gòu)成�！�

　　Today, bar codes appears on the surface of almost every product of contemporary life. All because a bright young man, his mind ablaze with dots and dashes, one day raked his fingers through the sand.

　　時(shí)至今日，我們生活中幾乎所有的產(chǎn)品都有條形碼，這都要?dú)w功于伍德蘭先生。正是伍德蘭先生年輕時(shí)靠著自己的聰明才智和滿腦子的點(diǎn)與破折號(hào)在那天將自己的手指從沙子中劃過(guò)才有了今天無(wú)處不在的條形碼。

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