A smart card is a plastic card embedded with an integrated circuit chip that can store and process data, used for identification, payment, telecommunications and access control. The French inventor Roland Moreno patented the underlying memory-card concept in 1974, and French banks and the state telephone operator commercialized the technology through the late 1970s and 1980s, first for prepaid telephone cards and later for bank cards. A smart card is read by inserting or tapping it against a compatible reader, which powers the embedded chip and exchanges data with it.
Facts
SignificanceFirst mass use was as a prepaid telephone card for payment in French payphones from 1983, opening the way for chip cards in banking and identification. 1 Partially Attested
Patent or First-Use DateThe date is when Moreno's first patent was filed, not the date it was granted. Sources
1. Smart card, Wikipedia
Invention, first paragraph
In 1974 Roland Moreno patented a secured memory card later dubbed the 'smart card'.
Invention, sentence on first mass use
The first mass use of the cards was as a telephone card for payment in French payphones, starting in 1983.
View the Source2. Roland Moreno, Wikipedia
Section: Smart cardQuote, Section: Smart card
as shown in his first patent filed on 25 March 1974, when he was just 29 years old.
Wikipedia, Automatic Identification and Data Capture (source)
In Group: Automatic Identification and Data Capture, Lead states AIDC includes smart cards among its technologiesView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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