Farewell to the magnetic stripe | Hackaday

For decades, the magnetic stripe has been ubiquitous on everything from credit cards to tickets to ID badges. But the BBC reports — unsurprisingly — that the days of the magnetic stripe are numbered. Between smartphones, QR codes and RFID, there’s simply less demand for the venerable technology.

IBM invented the strip in the early 1960s. The engineer in charge (Forrest Parry) was also involved in the development of the UPC code. While he was working on a secure ID for the CIA, his wife suggested that he melt a strip of magnetic tape onto the card with an iron. The rest is history.

The new technology quickly took hold, and by 1969 there was a standard in the United States that has remained largely unchanged. The BBC post notes that in 1970, a card reader could read a credit card from your pocket if it still had a magnetic stripe. Infamously, the CEO of IBM at the time was not a fan, reportedly because “Mum doesn’t like credit cards.”

So, while you’ll still find magnetic stripes on a few cards here and there, they’ll probably be gone completely in a few years. Don’t worry! You can still make them yourself. Don’t have a reader? Get a flatbed scanner.