Smart card is a credit card sized plastic card embedded with an integrated circuit chip that makes it "smart. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "smart" is a word dated back to the 12th century meaning making one smart : causing a sharp stinging. It also refers to someone which is : bright, clever, ingenious, or quick-witted. The word originated from Old English. As a noun it means "a person displaying ostentatious or smug cleverness." The word card dated back to the14 century. The origin was trace back to Middle English, a modification of Middle French. Can also trace back to Old Italia, from the Latin root it mean a leaf of paper, from the Greek root it mean a leaf of papyrus. In this assigment the word car have the meaning: a flat stiff usually small and rectangular piece of material (as paper, paperboard, or plastic) usually bearing information.
The dimensions of a smart card are 85.6 mm by 54 mm and a thickness of 0.76 mm. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 7810 set certain standards for all IC chip in which it has special physical properties. Those special properties are flexibility, temperature, resistance, and dimensions. The combination of a convenient plastic card and a microprocessor allow an immense amount of information to be stored, accessed, and processed either online or offline. .
The History.
The history of smart card traces back to the early 1950s, when Dinners Club produced the first plastic card to be used for payments. The Diners Club card allowed their members to pay with credit rather than cash. This credit was accepted by the majority of businesses all over the places. Today, with the advanced technologies, Credit Card has a magnetic strip that allows digitized data to be stored in the computer systems. However, the critical weaknesses are the data on the magnetic strip can be easily read, written, deleted or changed with off-the-shelf equipments.
