Starting back in the late 1960s, the story of the smart card follows the trail of technology through the second half of the 20th century. Helmut Grottrup came up with the first card with an automated chip inside. He was a rocket scientist, but the cards didn’t see use until almost thirty years later, and then were only to be used as swipe cards on French pay phones. The Frenchman Roland Moreno invented the first memory card in 1974. This version of the smart card is widely used today; video game systems, digital cameras, etc.
Smart cards have been put to everyday use now. Bus passes are a version of the smart card, the ID cards used by numerous businesses for their employees, and contactless credit cards all use this technology.
Germany uses smart cards for cigarette machines, ensuring that only age-appropriate customers buy. Argentina had the idea of using smart cards in driver’s licenses. The country had been plagued by countless car wrecks, massive amounts of unpaid fines, and the driving situation was in poor shape in general. With smart card driver’s licenses, unpaid fines couldn’t fall through the cracks, and poor driving records couldn’t be escaped from. A state in India, Gujarat, later did the same.
A smart card works in this manner: when the card is swiped or pressed again its reader, the card will download software to the reader, which then relays the information to whatever machine may be in use, whether it be a camera or a building’s gateway. Programs like SmartcardManagar can download software through APDU (Application Process Data Unit), which is what actually handles the communication that goes on between the smart card and the smart card reader.