I also recall one of the magazines from the early days championing
 computer-readable strips printed in the magazine, similar to a UPC code
 but obviously much longer.  Byte?  Kilobaud?  It's not coming up from
 long-term archive....  
There was a barcode reader 'wand' for the HP41 calculator, and later
tHP41 'solution books' (compilations of user-submitted programs came
with barcodes for all the programs in that book so you could scan them in
rather than typing them.
-tony