Inventions
Magnetic Stripe Card
Computer Engineering
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A magnetic stripe card carries a band of iron-based magnetic material bonded to a plastic card, on which data is encoded and later read by swiping the card through a reader that senses changes in the stripe's magnetic field. IBM engineer Forrest Parry developed the technique of permanently laminating a magnetic stripe onto a plastic card in 1960 while building a security-badge system for a United States government client, reportedly fusing the stripe to the card with his wife's clothes iron after adhesive alone failed. The technology was adopted widely over the following decades for credit and debit cards, transit tickets and hotel keycards, before contactless and chip-based cards began to replace it.
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