Oldest Known Credit Card
IBM set about transforming the raised letter credit card. IBM had experience with magnetic recording technology for audio since WWII, and the Advanced Systems Team, headed by Jerome Svigals and Forrest Parry, settled on magnetic tape as the only convenient data storage method capable of easily accessing the necessary alphanumeric information. Once the engineers decided on magnetic tape, the biggest challenge was designing a durable, inexpensive card.
The earliest trials were done on cardboard, although the acceleration of the invention meant that only two such prototypes were made before the plastic card was developed.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.