Visitors can scan the small rectangular code on the lower left of the grave of David Quiring's mother, Marcelline Quiring, and learn more about her. (David Quiring photo)

Seattle’s Quiring Monuments Inc. has introduced a new twist in memorials: a code affixed to gravestones that can be scanned with a smartphone to give more information about the deceased.

Company President Dave Quiring said he’s been exploring interactive gravestone technologies for years, but prior attempts were too expensive and the technologies were too temperamental and limited.

A first attempt in 2006 was a small RFID chip embedded in a gravestone, with information that could be accessed with a special reader. A second in 2008 was a flash memory, powered by a solar collector, that showed images of the deceased on a small screen built into a gravestone.

Both were produced by other companies, and few people bought either. The flash memory device cost $3,000.

Quiring has now developed its own way of incorporating a QR code — a squarish-lookingbarcode that smartphones can read — into a grave marker through a small plastic-metal composite tag affixed to the gravestone and a QR-operated website to back it up.

Anyone can scan a grave maker with their smartphone and learn more about the person buried there, Quiring said. Only friends and family members who have log-in access will be able to leave comments.

“This is such a simple solution, with no batteries, no big expense. The two pieces come together, and I think they make a neat marriage,” Quiring said.

So far the company has sold 15 of the new feature, which it's calling “Living Headstone,” in the roughly one month it has been on the market. The feature is included free with any memorial purchase, or can be added to an older stone for $65. It includes five years of support on the Quiring website.

“It took us five months to get the web page to be as user-friendly and robust as we have it now,” Quiring said. “It allows all the pictures you want to put on it.”

The company had considered engraving the QR codes directly onto stone gravestones or mausoleum markers, but decided that adding the tag was a better idea, in case the codes become an outmoded technology. He expects the tags will last for several generations.

Under the heading of great minds thinking alike, a gravestone company in Japan has launched its own version of the same technology.

Quiring said he had no idea anyone else was doing something similar.