---
title: "The technology that failed twice before it worked"
author: "Lax Mariappan"
date: "2025-10-06"
categories: ["Blogging"]
excerpt: "QR codes were invented in 1994. Nobody cared. Denso Wave created them to track car parts in Japanese factories. Brilliant technology. Wrong audience. The world wasn’t ready. Fast forward to 2010. Marketers discovered QR codes. They plastered them everywhere. Billboards, magazines, business cards, even tombstones. “Scan here for more information!” Nobody scanned. Why would they? […]"
canonical_url: "https://laxmariappan.com/the-technology-that-failed-twice-before-it-worked/"
---

# The technology that failed twice before it worked

QR codes were invented in 1994.

Nobody cared.

Denso Wave created them to track car parts in Japanese factories. Brilliant technology. Wrong audience. The world wasn’t ready.

Fast forward to 2010. Marketers discovered QR codes. They plastered them everywhere. Billboards, magazines, business cards, even tombstones. “Scan here for more information!”

Nobody scanned.

Why would they? Pull out your phone. Unlock it. Open a special app. Point the camera. Wait for focus. Hope the code works. All this to see a website you could’ve just typed in.

Too much friction. Too little reward.

The technology didn’t change between 2010 and 2020. But everything else did.

Cameras got better. Phones got faster. Apps disappeared into the operating system. Point and tap. That’s it. The friction melted away.

Then 2020 happened. A pandemic made touching things dangerous. Restaurants needed contactless menus. Events needed contactless check-ins. Suddenly QR codes weren’t clever marketing. They were necessary.

The same technology that failed twice finally found its moment.

For web developers, this matters. That feature your client rejected last year? Maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe it was early. That framework everyone ignored? Give it time. Market conditions change. User behavior shifts. Infrastructure improves.

Good ideas don’t always win immediately. Sometimes they wait.

The question isn’t just “does it work?” The question is “is the world ready for it to work?”

QR codes spent 25 years waiting for their answer.