American Magnetics, Inc.

International Technologies & Systems, Corporation

Curtis Terry Conant

William Bruce Frederick

A compact long-life smart card reader consisting of a housing with a tapered card opening, a card receiving area, a plurality of contacts located above the card receiving area connected to an integral printed circuit board which is mounted in a carrier on a pivot characterized by an actuating tab on each arm of said pivot that, when contacted by a smart card's leading edge, causes the pivot element to move the contacts through apertures in the bottom housing into the card receiving area, making connection with the smart card's respective contact pads, after which the front edge of the card activates a card seated switch via a switch lever. The compact long-life smart card reader's housing contains either through holes, or threaded inserts that are used for mounting the reader to an enclosure, or terminal housing without the requirement of other compact smart card readers that require an external printed circuit board for electrical connection and mounting of the smart card readers' housing. A preferred embodiment includes the reader's 'contacts' having a long cantilever design that provide a low, consistent contact force, resulting in minimum wear, long contact life, and positions the front row of the contacts to be as close to the card entry slot as possible, which allows for a smaller reader housing depth then found in any compact readers with similar life, integral printed circuit board, and mounting characteristics.

Compact robust smart card reader

Misaligned magnetic stripe cards are often improperly encoded during a write operation. The problem occurs most frequently in hand swipe encoders where the encoding operation may occur quickly without sufficient care to seat the card properly. A write - disable circuit responsive to the proper positioning of the card prevents such improper encoding, and destruction of valid encoding on adjacent tracks.

Hand swipe magnetic stripe encoder

A card reader includes an opaque arm movable in response to the insertion of a credit card. The arm, when moved, interrupts a light path signalling the presence of the card thus permitting write or read operations on a magnetic stripe on the card. The use of arm permits highly reliable operation due to the location of the light path defining devices in a place where they are protected from contaminants. In addition, the light path is always interrupted with an obstruction of known opacity.

Credit card reading apparatus with reliable optical path interrupt means

A multimedia reader and/or writer such as a credit card reader is adapted to receive media of different thicknesses, such as checks, cards and passports. The medium enters a channel defined by walls or rails, one of which includes a spring loaded section which adjusts to the different thicknesses. The medium moves against a wear plate which includes striations to guide the edge of the medium away from the spring loaded section in order to avoid catching the medium.

Growing community of inventors

San Pedro, CA, United States of America

Curtis Terry Conant