Since we are still in the week of International Women's Day, here's an interesting little nugget I stumbled upon on the Daily Mail's website, of all places.
It seems that we owe the invention of the magnetic stripe now found in all plastic cards to the commonsense of a 1950s American housewife....
Back in 1960, IBM Engineer and inventor Forrest Parry was on the brink of originating the magnetic stripe. His idea was to glue short pieces of magnetic tape to the cards. Only problem was, he couldn't get it to stick to the plastic without the tape warping and becoming unusable. Glumly he gave up for the day and went home, only to find his wife, Dorothea, busy at the ironing board. He told her about his problem, and, in a flash of inspiration, she grabbed a plastic card and a bit of magnetic tape off him, applied the flat iron, et voila! Success: the heat of the iron was just enough to stick the tape to the card without damaging it.
The birth of the modern-day smart card, which changed banking forever, all thanks to the presence of mind of Dorothea Forrest. It was another 10 years before the banking industry managed to get its act together to agree an international standard for the magnetic stripe, and for the credit card as we know it today to come into everyday use.
I bet it wouldn't have taken so long if the bankers had been female. Good old Dorothea, I only hope the plastic didn't stick to the iron and ruin the rest of her ironing. I hate it when that happens.
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