I had a couple including one USB one that I later modified to use to scan regular bar codes.
I pulled up Wikipedia to look up who created them, and apparently he changed his name after they failed. He was also on Curse of Oak Island searching for gold and was involved in ballot shenanigans in the 2020 US presidential election where he was notable for supposedly inventing a machine to find bamboo fibers on ballots.
And then QR codes came along… Basically the same thing.
Japan created QR codes in the 90s. What changed was everyone carrying around an internet connected camera.